What would be the difference between a NATIONWIDE GSE Health Ins Co-Op and a Credit Union?

So reThugs are slowly coming out against co-ops that few people are for(Google "republicans against co ops"), that fact alone made me look into them.

What would be the difference from a NATIONWIDE (not regional) Goverment Sponsered Entity HCI co-op and a National credit union?

I see the nation wide GSE HCI co-op having two advantages..

- Captializaton, the GSE Health Ins Co-Op would have gobs of money backing it and wont need higher premiums to compete with private HCI's.
- Instant Non For Profit status(like credit union) and no public offerings for stocks (like the FMMs); No dividends...no high CEO pay....no quarterly reports....none of what makes the current private HCI premiums increase ad nauseum.

- Politically it would give cover for a couple of reThugs to vote for it since it's not the public option (don't know why they didn't come out with single payer first, them make them settle for pub option) and dems can say it's not government controlled since conservatives hate Americas government.

Your thoughts?

TIA

I don't much care.

and most winning arguments for doing it all right the first time. The goal of the industry is to avoid ANY legislation that is not merely a giveaway to themselves. ANY legislation must provide cover and firewalls and arguments against further reform momentum such as when Medicare simply existed in a separate world from private insurance and NO conclusions were ever allowed to be drawn. Encouraged by THAT limiting success of many decades they even encourage the error prone systems that would continue the "government overtaxes and does not work" meme. Encouraging states to do single payer- if they dare- puts their limited pool and resources behind a hodgepodge morass the industry can talk to death. The same goes for any public option that goes in with one arm tied behind its back to take some of the heat(high risk and poor) off their shoulders. And boy, will they dump propaganda against ANY effort in the public sector that rivals their money interests into the totally receptive Corporate Pravda and fill DINO coffers.

My Dad was a union insurance spokesman his last years at work. The simplest principle is that the biggest pool can provide the best benefits. Our system is insane for that alone countering with the inapplicable principle that competition by countless profit motive pools can ever be better. No, the idea is that any failures by the single pool need single focus watching and accountability- which you can't get as a premium payer or even stockholder in one of many private companies.

Even if Reich is right that the same momentum of change would happen with any real reform inroads, the industry will not capitulate and has reason given to them every day that delay and opposition- by ANY means- works for their interests. This battle will never be over until the profiteering private health complex is broken and private insurance reduced to a supplementary voluntary adjunct of a national health care system. THEY drew those battle lines.

BTW, I know not many are in my status as having choice over policies, but is time to abandon- with extreme prejudice- plans that use your premiums to hurt you and your government in favor of those who at the least don't stand in the way- even if it costs more because the cost of supporting the complex's growing horror is too great. Union plans, possibly the AARP and whatever moral choices are out there would help in a boycott of the top traitors and murderers we seem to feel forced to PERSONALLY subsidize while complain our Congress is doing the same. Blue Choice is a good plan but it has lost this payee permanently. Let them know as you take away their money.

http://prwatch.org/node/8520

Thanks to gang member Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, the gang reportedly is giving serious consideration to replacing the good idea of a public insurance option with an idea that is sheer fantasy: a few nonprofit co-operatives that would be expected to compete with the cartel of giant for-profit insurance companies and “win in the marketplace,” to use a favorite term of my former CEO and cartel heavyweight, H. Edward Hanway.

If you don’t believe anything else I have said or written, please believe this: nonprofit co-operatives don’t stand a snowball’s chance of competing with those big companies and making a whit of a difference in the lives of the 75 million Americans who either have no insurance or have such marginal insurance they might as well have no insurance.

Kool-Aid came to mind as I was reading a story in the Wall Street Journal this week about Conrad’s continuing and naive insistence that co-ops could work. I remembered sitting in a meeting of other insurance company executives a few years ago. A leading advocate of the high-deductible plans the industry is trying to force us all into these days (and out of the plans insurance industry pollsters and politicians say we are all happy with and can stay in--if we wish upon a star), grew so exasperated after failing to convince us that these plans would be good for most Americans, he finally said, “Look, you’re just going to have to drink the Kool-Aid.”

...capitalized and wouldn't need the financial mandates the regional private HCI's needed and lowers premiums.

Also I said NATIONWIDE, not regional....again, the more money going into the GSE NFP the better

The Healthcare Access Rental Cartel is not going to put up with any form of a viable public non-profit alternative. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in rent extraction from us peasants at stake here.

...program if it was given a title 36 charter and a CEO and a GSE designation.

It would make GOPers heads explode as they try to say this is just another government program but have a CEO as the head.

As mentioned, make them nation-wide in scope, rather than state or region-wide, so as to boost their customer base and negotiating clout, for example.

Continue with this exercise - I'd make the co-op a Title 36 corporation, chartered directly by Congress, and include some rules in the charter mandating that the co-op be non-profit, that it always be owned by its member/customers, and insurance company thugs keeps their HANDS OFF, through the use of conflict-of-interest rules.

Of course, we'll all know if co-ops actually become something we can live with - the insurance companies and their lobbyists will start hating them and declare them to be OMG SOCIALIST, PART OF OBAMA'S OLIGARHY!!!1!1one

...reThugs heads explode IMHO. The GSE would have to be federally capitalized or "backed" with federal bonds or bills and would cut premiums in half potentially from the beginning.

That along with no precondiations and no dropping people from the HCI roles would make current HCI's go bankrupt....that would be a good thing IMHO

But then you run into the basic problem that anything with sufficient power to beckon consumers away from the private insurance industry will be opposed by the industry and by the Republicans and conservative Democrats. The whole point of a non-private alternative - a directly government-administer public option OR a government-sponsored Co-op - is to provide meaningful competition. But the industry doesn't want anything that will actually take away customers. That's why Conrad and the Gang of 6 are looking into regional or state-based co-ops which will be far too weak to be meaningful. And even THEN the industry and Republicans are considering opposition because they would still take way some customers.

My feeling is, make it semi-independent and make it a national co-op if that's absolutely necessary to get conservative Democratic support. But if it's simply an attempt to get Republican votes or the support of industry then forget it - just make it a government-run public option and be done with it.

were able to succeed because they had a high enough concentration of members to own their own facility.

Large sections of the country will never be able to have that kind of concentration.

More importantly a 'national co-op' is an oxymoron.


The co-op is owned by its members and the reason that you have a coop is to have an organization that will exploit your local situation.

A national coop would have to have national elections and a national board and all of the conflicting issues (more on preventative vs end of life, rural vs urban) would be fought out in national campaigns.


There will be no national coop.


There will be a public option or there will be no real reform,.


Public Option is the compromise, anything beyond that is a fundamental sell out.