John,

At the end of last month, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) announced that they were re-naming their program for the partial privatization of Medicare from DCEs to ACO-REACH. But the problem wasn’t the name―it’s the policy, which can shift people with traditional Medicare into private insurance plans that make more money by denying care.

Social Security Works members rallied congressional champions, sent more than 120,000 petition signatures, and drew public attention to this program. Ultimately, it was enough to make the DCE brand toxic, but not enough to get CMMI bureaucrats to abandon their dreams of shifting Medicare from an efficient, single-payer system into a privatized cash cow for health insurers.

This is going to be a long fight. But we’re not giving up. Become a 2022 Member of Social Security Works with a donation of $5 or more today, and fuel our organizing to end this dangerous program.

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Here’s the hard truth: Congress gave a broad greenlight to CMMI to conduct “experiments” designed to save money. That means that CMMI can create these managed care programs like REACH without additional congressional oversight, even though we have decades of data on what private insurers bring to the health care system: Debt and misery. The last thing seniors want or need is an insurance bureaucrat coming between them and their doctors. But that’s exactly what REACH does.

At Social Security Works, we have fought for Medicare for All because seniors know the value of simple, universal programs like Social Security and Medicare, and we don’t want our kids and grandkids to have to wait until they turn 65 to access that simplicity. Experiments that enroll seniors in private health insurance without their knowledge are what we’d expect from the Trump administration, but we expected better from Joe Biden.

President Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, can take action to rein in the rogue actions of CMMI. Sec. Becerra should immediately issue a statement affirming the Biden administration’s support for traditional Medicare, and formulate safeguards to prevent CMMI from “innovating” in ways that deny seniors care and betray Medicare’s fundamental promise.

We’re not giving up on this campaign. Together, we can save Medicare from greedy private insurers! Become a Social Security Works member today!

Thanks,

Michael Phelan
Social Security Works