President Joe Biden speaks as First Lady Jill Biden attends an event with service members and their families in New York on November 25, 2024. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

The Biden administration has abandoned efforts to revive a costly contract to run the 1-800-MEDICARE call center and other services, a contract battle that has dragged itself into election-year policy debates and Republican accusations of undue union influence.

Maximus, the McLean, Va., company that has long served as a subcontractor for the federal Department of Health, will retain its $6.6 billion contract and continue to operate call centers for Medicare and Affordable Care Act through 2031, the company and federal officials confirmed.

“We appreciate the opportunity to continue supporting HHS and CMS in their vital missions and look forward to providing innovative, high-quality and reliable solutions that will benefit the American public,” said Bruce Caswell, president and CEO of Maximus, in a press release.

Unions had complained about the company’s business practices and officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, had personally spoken out about the need to review the contract, one of the agreements of richest services offered by the federal government. But officials’ intervention and proposed language for the new contract drew criticism from GOP leaders who said it wrongly pressured contractors to employ union staff and called it a favor of an election year for unions.

Maximus sued the Biden administration over its decision to revive the contract, calling it “baseless and illegal.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), the new chairman of the Senate health panel, credited his office’s oversight efforts with helping end the impasse.

“Maximus’ contract should never have ended in the first place,” Cassidy said in a statement Tuesday. “Clearly, the Biden-Harris administration wanted to revive this contract to force unionization on call center workers, even if they chose not to join a union.

Federal officials did not respond to questions about why they ended their efforts to revive the contract and whether their initial desire to do so was union-driven.

“Continuing to maintain and improve the customer experience is and will remain a top priority for CMS,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a statement.

The fight centered on the Biden administration’s September 2022 decision to award a $6.6 billion contract to Maximus — and Biden officials’ decision to terminate the contract 15 months later, citing concerns about customer service despite high approval ratings for Maximus’ call center operations. The Medicare call line had a satisfaction rate of 95 percent, according to federal officials.

CMS officials also amended the contract to add a “labor harmony agreement,” essentially a commitment by participating companies to make peace with unions and not suffer a work stoppage affecting call centers .

Democrats and unions had welcomed the addition of labor harmony provisions, after Claude Cummings Jr., president of the Communications Workers of America, and other union leaders criticized Maximus’ wages and other practices. . Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) and other prominent Democrats also sided with unions against Maximus. The CWA did not respond to a request for comment on federal officials’ decision to terminate the rebidding of the contract.

Outside observers said there was little precedent for abruptly terminating a current contract and adding new labor harmony provisions.

In August, seventeen Republican attorneys general demanded that HHS return the contract to Maximus, warning that reviving the contract and potentially disrupting call centers was a “favor to labor organizations” that would “jeopardize the health services on which Americans count.” They also argued that labor policymaking falls to Congress, which has approved measures allowing employees to refrain from union activity.

Maximus has long maintained that the Biden administration’s attempt to revive the contract was illegal and externally motivated, although he declined to elaborate on his allegations.

“The facts, evidence and timing point to other motivations beyond Maximus’ superior performance on this contract,” Eileen Cassidy Rivera, a Maximus spokeswoman, said in a statement Wednesday.