Repeat after me. Health care Cooperatives.Health care Cooperatives. Health care Cooperatives.
That is the term you are going to be hearing again and again the next couple months. With a government public option on life support, the cooperatives option looks to be the pivot point in the debate over health care.
A cooperatives option may get more Republican support but get ready for special interest groups to simply label these cooperatives as pretty much government run and/or mandated. In fact, the President himself labeled cooperatives a "public option" but just not subsidized with taxpayer money.
Liberals aren't enamored with cooperatives because they want the government run public option. Here's the way they see it: The government run public option is like a Brad Pitt Pin-Up poster on the wall. The Cooperatives option is like a Nick Nolte mug shot. Click here to see what I mean. Or how about this example to the under 25 crowd. It's like choosing between Zac Efron (Public Option) and Napoleon Dynamite (Cooperatives Option)
It begs the following question: can the cooperatives idea even pass through Congress? Cooperatives ARE NOT a slam dunk. I can envision a Senate bill with the cooperatives plan in it and a House version without it. if it ever got to conference, the heavy lift will be convincing liberal members in the House to vote for a final version with the cooperatives option. No easy sell.
By the way, if you're confused about the cooperatives option (join the crowd, check out this baby), you should study Group Health in the Seattle Washington area. That'll give you a pretty decent example of the overall sense of what a health cooperative looks like. The link to Group Health is here and read a little more from the Examiner below:
The concept is that a group (members of the cooperative) could join together to purchase health insurance for their members like farmers have done for years to market and distribute produce . Credit unions are the financial industry’s version of the co-op.
Under the concept as proposed by Sen. Conrad, co-ops would operate under a federal structure with each state having an affiliate but be independent of the government. A 3 to 4 billion dollar start up grant would be offered by the federal government.
Just like private insurance companies operating today, cooperatives would be required to maintain specific financial reserves in the event of unexpectedly high claims. This could be a very difficult problem for a start-up cooperative. Without adequate financial reserves to be able to pay all claims, even catastrophic claims, the cooperative would fail and the members would be left with no coverage.
Health insurance companies today are usually either stock-holder owned companies, which include the largest companies like United Healthcare, Aetna , Cigna or Humana. There are also companies organized as non-profits such as Kaiser Permanente. Outside the health insurance market, there are many examples of “mutual” insurance companies such as Mutual of Omaha and Northwestern Mutual Life. These companies are actually cooperatives.
Senator Conrad often points to the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound as an example of a mutual insurer. Based in Seattle, Washington, Group Health Cooperative is a consumer-governed, nonprofit health care system that services more than a half million people in Washington and Idaho. Group Health is governed by an 11 member Board of Trustee who are all health plan members and elected by the other members.