Stop Direct Contracting and REACH

In the waning days of the Trump Administration, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) launched a pilot program called Medicare Direct Contracting. This under-the-radar program invited third-party middlemen to “manage” the care of Traditional Medicare beneficiaries. It also created a financial incentive for these middlemen to frustrate patients and deny medically necessary care.

Thanks to the efforts of thousands of activists, Direct Contracting became thoroughly discredited and the Biden Administration was pressured to address the program. Their initial response was to simply rebrand Direct Contracting as Medicare REACH, a program that retained the worst elements of its predecessor and in some cases is even more generous to industry. But the coalition to protect Medicare wasn’t fooled by this approach. We continued to demand an end to corporate profiteering.