Health Care Cooperatives

Since I last wrote about the health care crisis the topic has moved front and center in Washington. At this time there are several proposals on the table. The House Democrats had proposed a public plan involving insurance exchanges that would be run by the secretary of Health and Human Services that, by last Wednesday, was watered down to nothing but negotiating with insurance companies. The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee of the Senate, along with President Obama, instead support legislation that would establish a public plan that would compete with private health insurers. The Republicans are proposing, well, nothing. All they’ve done is put out a vague outline with no details. Rather than providing something positive the Republicans spend most of their time on hate-radio trying to scare people with “socialized medicine.” A real solution such as the single-payer option, much less cooperatively-owned and non-profit hospitals/ clinics that I had previously endorsed, is nowhere among the choices.

But something exciting and new has recently been placed on the table.

A group of six Senators on the Finance Committee, which includes the highly controversial chairman of the finance committee Sen. Max Baucus (D – Montana), are proposing legislation that would establish non-profit consumer health care cooperatives as a solution to the health care crisis. These consumer cooperatives would receive “seed money” to start but would then be expected to be self-sustaining.

Let that sink in for just a moment. Government provided social investment (i.e. “seed money”) would be used to establish non-profit cooperatives. Sound familiar?

Originally proposed by Sen. Senator Kent Conrad (D – North Dakota) the proposal has started to gain steam in Congress. Reuters is predicting that it will ultimately be part of the health care package.

Of course it might not become law. Yet even if it doesn’t the fact that this discussion is taking place is wonderful for economic democracy. Reuters has already done a Q&A on Co-ops due to this. Newspaper articles have been written on this proposal. NPR has run several radio articles on the subject including one that was very positive.

One can’t help but daydream at times like these. What seeds are being sown by this proposal? What if health cooperatives based on social investment become a reality? People just might wake up one day, look around and ask, “Why aren’t all private-insurance companies organized as cooperatives using social investment?” Then there may a come a day when that people might ask, “Since socially funded insurance cooperatives work so well why isn’t the corporation that I work for also a cooperative using social investment?” When the day arrives that people ask that last question then the dream of economic democracy will become a reality.