"Health insurance co-op" is an oxymoron. If this is the Obama Administration's answer to health insurance reform, we might have done better with a former Vietnam POW who has received a lifetime full of single payer health care, and knows that it works. Without a public health care option, any bill that Obama signs is just a giveaway to the insurance companies and the medical industry.
I am hugely disappointed by the Administration's apparent willingness to sacrifice the public health insurance option in favor of "co-ops". Having been a member of various co-ops, I know that the elected co-op leadership determines policy, and that those with financial interests are the most likely to run for positions on the board or governing council of the co-op.
For a "health insurance co-op", the insurance and drug companies would spend money to get their interests represented in co-op boards, making it difficult for the rest of us to compete for those leadership positions. In the end, that would put the Billy Tauzins and William McGuires of the world in charge, because the health insurance and medico-industrial complex has the most to gain or lose. I believe that a "health insurance co-op" would eventually prove to be no different than one of today's private insurance companies, and we would be stuck right where we are now. Co-ops work fine for camping gear, but a health insurance co-ops is not going to be sending out any annual member profit-sharing checks.
I say this as someone with very good employer-based private health insurance, but also as the parent of two adult children who will need to have their own assurance of affordable and accessible health care, without some insurance company bureaucrat deciding if they can be covered and whether to pay for their treatments. I'm also willing to spend some money to provide universal health care -- a dollar per day per person over 10 years is more than a trillion dollars!
As Dr. Howard Dean noted,
"You can't have reform without a public option. If you really want to fix the health-care system, you've got to give the public the choice of having such an option. If you don't want to have the public option, you most certainly shouldn't spend $60 billion a year subsidizing the health-insurance industry."