On August 8, 2022, the Alameda Labor Council passed a resolution to stop the privatization of Medicare and to abolish ACO REACH, the program that is bringing private equity, venture capital, and insurance companies into traditional Medicare.
Seniors who chose traditional Medicare can be placed, without their consent, into ACO REACH where denial of care increases profit.
The resolution was passed unanimously.
RESOLUTION
WHEREAS For 57 years Medicare has been a vital part of the social safety net in this country,
providing government-paid health care for millions of seniors and people with disabilities who
might otherwise be reduced to poverty by medical bills, and
WHEREAS, Unlike private insurers, Medicare allows patients to see any doctor they want and is
able to keep its administrative costs to a minimum by paying providers directly, and
WHEREAS Instead of filling the gaps in Medicare’s coverage, the federal government has
increasingly used Medicare funds to subsidize private insurance companies, significantly
increasing its administrative costs, burdening doctors with extra paperwork, and providing new
opportunities for fraudulent billing by private insurers, and
WHEREAS In 2020 private insurers like Humana and UnitedHealth charged Medicare over $12
billion paying for diagnoses that were not actually treated, leading Sen. Elizabeth Warren to
charge that “Medicare is hemorrhaging money in scams and frauds,” and
WHEREAS the ongoing privatization has created a $350 billion market that Wall Street and
private equity firms are rushing to exploit, undermining Medicare’s solvency and putting crucial
decisions about patient care in the hands of actuaries rather than doctors, and
WHEREAS The DCE program was launched without Congressional approval, oversight, or even
discussion, and
WHEREAS, Thus far the Biden administration has responded to public protests of DCE not by
ending it but by making essentially cosmetic changes and rebranding it ACO/REACH, and
WHEREAS, it is within the power of the Biden administration to end the program with a stroke
of a pen, therefore be it
RESOLVED that the Alameda Labor Council calls upon the AFL-CIO to ask President Biden to end
the ACO/REACH program immediately.
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Founded in 1901, the Alameda Labor Council was chartered by the AFL-CIO as the regional body for labor unity in 1958 and serves as an umbrella organization for more than 135 unions representing 135,000 workers.
The resolution, drafted by Peter Shapiro, was introduced by the California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) whose members are directly threatened by Medicare privatization. Shapiro is a retired member of the National Association of Letter Carriers and the author of the book “Song of the Stubborn One Thousand, The Watsonville Canning Strike, 1985-87.”
If your union or retirees group passes a similar resolution, please send a copy to nursenpo@aol.com.
You can sign a petition against ACO REACH here.
The Alameda Labor Council resolution can be found at this link.
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