Affordable Care Act

1 Comment

1. Old Observer says:

   January 18, 2017 at 12:39 am

   It seems to me that the problems surrounding replacement of the Affordable Care Act generate the need for an old yet new idea: Health insurance cooperative.

   (Wikipedia) A health insurance cooperative is a cooperative entity that has the goal of providing health insurance and is also owned by the people that the organization insures. It is a form of mutual insurance. A health insurance cooperative would not be government owned or run, but would instead receive an initial government investment and would then be operated as a non-profit organization.

   I would say that you could form a cooperative without any government investment and instead find a quality private health care provider(s) that will be willing to provide the startup funds. Then it is a matter of switching consumers to register in the co-op.

   (Wikipedia) Bill Oemichen, President of the Cooperative Network, remarked that “where co-ops are, they tend to be very, very high quality because it is the consumer who owns them, that is making sure that their health care provider is a quality health care provider.” Oemichen also stated that 65% of those who switched from typical health insurance reported better coverage and service.
   In June 2009, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley told reporters, “if it’s all done entirely within the private sector, you know, it doesn’t seem to me it’s got the faults that you have… by having the government institute something.” Steven Hill, a program director at the New America Foundation, has written for Salon.com that “co-ops may hold the key to a substantive compromise”, comparing the U.S. reform proposals with health care in Germany. He argued that they can produce quality care for less money given that they would lack the profit motive, they would negotiate fees for service, and that they would end current market monopolies that insurance companies have in several states.

   Old Observer