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Meg Garratt-Reed
Updated: January 31, 2023
Governor nominates first director of new affordable health care office
Gov. Janet Mills has nominated the first director of the state's new Office of Affordable Health Care, an independent agency tasked with analyzing cost drivers for health care and proposing solutions.
Meg Garratt-Reed, who leads Maine's Office of the Health Insurance Marketplace at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, will serve as executive director of Maine's new Office of Affordable Health Care.
The office will study health-related data and identify policy recommendations to improve health care affordability, quality, access and equity for individuals and families, employers, other health care payers and state government.
Garratt-Reed’s nomination is subject to review by the Legislature’s Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services Committee and confirmation by the Maine State Senate. If confirmed, she will serve a five-year term.
Garratt-Reed comes to the job after helping launch CoverME.gov as a fully state-run health insurance marketplace in 2021, overseeing the successful transition of the marketplace from a hybrid federal-state model.
Maine’s greater control of its marketplace, paired with the expansion of Medicaid, contributed to the state having the largest decline in its uninsured rate among all states in the nation in recent years, according to Monday's announcement from the governor's office.
“Meg’s knowledge, her depth of experience, and her outstanding work to establish CoverME.gov make her an excellent candidate to lead the new Office of Affordable Health Care,” Mills said. “With Meg at the helm of this independent, nonpartisan organization, I believe we can continue to make headway in expanding lifesaving insurance to more people and improving health care affordability.”
Garratt-Reed was previously the senior advisor for coverage and affordability at DHHS. Before joining DHHS, she was director of policy and partnerships at United States of Care, a non-partisan nonprofit organization supporting state-level efforts to expand quality, affordable health care. She also served as a special assistant to the director of delivery system reform in the Office of the Administrator at the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“I'm honored by this nomination and the opportunity to build on Maine’s nation-leading expansion of coverage to help ensure all Maine people can afford the health care they need,” Garratt-Reed said. “The Office of Affordable Health Care, working with the governor's office, legislators and stakeholders, will advance solutions to bring relief from rising health care costs to Maine families and businesses in new and meaningful ways.”
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