Don’t Fall for The Co-Op Co-Opt

Conn Carroll / June 19, 2009

President Barack Obama’s desire for government-run health insurance, aka the “public option,” is threatening to kill health care reform. Now some Senators are floating a “compromise” plan that would create cooperative plans as an alternative to a government-run public plan. True co-ops have a long and proud tradition in many sectors of the U.S. economy, including health care. But the plan currently being floated in the Senate takes the co-op concept in the wrong direction. The Washington Post reports:

In its place, the draft circulated yesterday outlines a co-op approach modeled after rural electricity and telecom providers, subject to government oversight and funded with federal seed money.

Federal funding and regulation are a recipe for health care co-op disaster. Heritage fellows Edmund Haislmaier, Dennis Smith, and Nina Owcharenko explain: (more…)