by Janet Hoy and Mary Schreiber

• The Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Realizing Equity, Access and Community Health or REACH Program is an effort by CMS to improve the quality of care for people with Traditional Medicare  through better care coordination and by increasing access to accountable care in medically underserved communities.
• The REACH Program focuses on underserved populations to help close the racial and ethnic disparities that have been identified with Traditional Medicare.
• ACOs are partnerships of health care providers -- doctors, hospitals and other health care providers -- who collaborate to provide coordinated high-quality care to their Medicare patients. 
• CMS hopes to achieve 100% of Traditional Medicare beneficiaries in ACOs by 2030.
• Over 55% of ACOs are provider organizations; the remainder are largely Federally Qualified Health Centers, Rural Health Centers and Critical Access Hospitals; a complete list of participating ACO’s is available at cms.gov.

Here is wording from the League’s position on health care related to privatization.  (See pages 137-139 of LWVUS Impact on Issues 2022 – 2024 for the full health care position.)

The League of Women Voters of the United States believes that a basic level of quality health care at an affordable cost should be available to all U.S. residents.

The League supports administration of the U.S. health care system either by a combination of the private and public sectors or by a combination of federal, state, and/or regional government agencies.

The League is opposed to a strictly private market-based model of financing the health care system. The League also is opposed to the administration of the health care system solely by the private sector or the states.