I’m writing out of great concern about Direct Contracting, now called ACO REACH, which hands a beloved and trusted public program, traditional Medicare, to Wall Street investors in the name of improving health equity. But health inequities cannot be eliminated by profit-seeking corporations, which created the inequities in the first place! You can stop this Wall Street money grab by issuing an executive order ending Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs)/ACO-REACH.
Almost 100 mostly investor-owned DCEs operate in practically every state and have the potential to assign up to 36 million people on Traditional Medicare to a for-profit DCE without their knowledge or consent. The new DCEs, ACO REACH, propose to achieve equity without any evidence. There is plenty of evidence that when for-profit corporations get involved in health care, such as in dialysis centers and nursing homes, costs go up, and patient care suffers. DCE/ACO-REACH are run by private equity firms, venture capital investors, and commercial insurers and can pocket up to 40% of the Medicare dollars as profit or administrative fees, threatening to bankrupt Medicare.
Private equity will never achieve health equity. Please support the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s demands urging you to issue an executive order ending the DCE/ACO-REACH program! Thanks.
First sent on May 20, 2022 by Jess Craven
