Health Care ‘Co-Ops’: Strategy for Killing Real Health Care Reform

http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/08/20/health-care-co-ops-strategy-for-killing-real-health-care-reform/

by Mike Hall, Aug 20, 2009

U.S. House and Senate health care reform bills that have won committee approval contain a public health insurance option as a vital component and that, says a new report released this morning, “is considerable cause for celebration.”

The report’s author, Yale University professor Jacob S. Hacker, also warns that efforts to push health care cooperatives, which recently have been floated as an alternative to a public option, are meant “to kill the public plan and, with it, the prospect of an effective competitor to consolidated insurance companies that have too often failed to provide affordable health security.”



The report, commissioned by the Institute for America’s Future, details how a strong public health insurance plan is critical to successfully achieving the goals of health reform—lower costs, higher quality and guaranteed health security for all Americans.

A public health insurance plan option would allow working families to keep their current employer-provided coverage or, if they have no insurance, choose between a private plan and a public plan that offers quality care. Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:

A quality public health insurance option is a crucial part of health care reform to keep private insurance companies honest, hold down costs and ensure that everybody has a health care choice available.

The House bill (H.R. 3200), approved by three committees, and the Senate version (The Affordable Health Choices Act, no bill number yet) passed by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, both call for a public plan option, but contain some differences in the way such a plan would operate.

However, leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, which has yet to produce a bill, have dropped support for a public plan option and endorsed health care co-ops-yet provided few details of how the co-ops would operate.

Hacker, who calls the co-ops cop-outs, says:

There is absolutely no reason to think that cooperatives of any sort could achieve the three crucial goal that a competing public plan must accomplish—provide a backup option offering health and financial security to individuals without employer coverage, a cost and quality benchmark, and a cost-control backstop that drives payment and delivery system reform.

FULL story at link.