Washington is full of wasteful programs that never seem to go away, no matter how badly they fail. But few are more deserving of elimination than the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) — a little-known agency that was supposed to save taxpayer dollars but has instead wasted billions while making healthcare worse for seniors.

CMMI was created in 2010 under Obamacare to test new ways to lower Medicare and Medicaid costs while improving care. The idea sounded good on paper, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) once projected it would save taxpayers $34 billion over ten years. Instead, it has cost taxpayers around $9 billion, and the CBO now says it will cost another $1.3 billion over the next decade.

This is yet another government program that started with big promises but turned into a bloated mess. And it’s a ripe target for Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s mission to gut government waste. The duo should call on Congress to shut it down.

Over the past 14 years, CMMI has run dozens of “experiments” testing different ways for Medicare and Medicaid to pay for care. The results have been failure after failure. Of the 49 payment models it tested from 2011-2020, only six saved any money — and even those savings were tiny.

Most of CMMI’s projects have actually made healthcare more expensive and more complicated for seniors. One of the worst examples is the Medicare Advantage Value-Based Insurance Design (VBID) Model. It was supposed to make Medicare Advantage plans more efficient. Instead, it drained $4.5 billion from the Medicare Trust Fund without meaningfully improving patient care. After years of wasted money, the Biden administration finally scrapped it.

CMMI has also turned into a boondoggle for government contractors, spending at least $7.9 billion on outside consultants and vendors with little to show for it. One of CMMI’s biggest failures, the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus Model, spent $400 million on outside contractors only to drive up Medicare costs by $2.4 billion. That’s money that could have gone toward lowering Medicare premiums or, even better, back to taxpayers.

But the problem isn’t just wasted money. CMMI has too much power. Unlike other Medicare programs, it doesn’t need approval from Congress to make big changes. That means unelected government bureaucrats — who never have to answer to voters — get to decide how much doctors are paid and what kinds of treatments seniors can access.

Many of CMMI’s experiments have buried doctors in red tape, making it harder for them to focus on their patients. Patient advocates have warned that some projects have restricted access to critical treatments, particularly for people with serious illnesses like cancer and autoimmune diseases.

This shouldn’t even need saying, but vulnerable seniors on Medicare shouldn’t have to worry that Washington bureaucrats are experimenting with their health care just to see what happens.

It gets worse. Under the Biden administration, the agency embedded progressive social justice metrics into its decision-making process, seemingly prioritizing equity and DEI goals over Medicare’s core mission. The AHEAD Model, for instance, ties state Medicaid funding to health equity targets — an ideological overreach that distracts from CMMI’s supposed mission of reducing costs while improving care. This is exactly what happens when government agencies get too much power and too little oversight.

The good news is that Republicans in Congress can get rid of the bureaucratic “experiment” that’s causing all this havoc. Because CMMI was created under Obamacare, its authority is not permanent. Congress can defund it entirely, taking power away from unelected bureaucrats and putting Medicare and Medicaid decisions back in the hands of lawmakers who answer to voters.

At the very least, Congress must rein in CMMI’s power, forcing it to get approval before making major changes.

If lawmakers won’t act on their own, Elon Musk and the DOGE team should shine a spotlight on CMMI and put pressure on Congress to take action.

CMMI’s architects promised better care, lower costs, and greater efficiency. Instead, Americans got wasteful spending, fewer choices, and declining quality. It’s time for the new administration to end this disaster before it does even more harm.

Saul Anuzis is president of 60 Plus, the American Association of Senior Citizens.