Democratic Senator Kent Conrad

Right now, as Democrats slowly back away from their plans for a government-run ‘public option,’ another idea is emerging as a possible replacement: health care cooperatives. North Dakota Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who recently said that the administration’s push for a ‘public option’ was dead in the water is a main proponent of this plan. So the question is: is a health care co-op a viable alternative or just the Democrats’ attempt to put lipstick on a pig?

Universal health Care Proponents (Left)

A health care co-op would be a non-profit entity that would offer insurance rates at competitive prices. Any profits they make would go back to the system. Conrad said on CNN’s “American Morning” that this program would attract 12 million customers and quickly become the third largest insurer in the country. The problems with this description affect people on both right and left. Starting with the Left, there are 46 million uninsured people, so the 12 million figure falls short. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the co-ops would provide coverage discounted enough for the less affluent and many existing co-ops can deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. In other words, liberals will complain that this is far too little government involvement.

Protest against Government Takeover of Health Care (Right)

From the Right, the problems are more pronounced. First of all, this plan will end up gaining 12 million members, but from where? Obviously, this means that many of these new members will be people who already have private health insurance, hence when they talk about a ‘competitive’ co-op they mean competition against private insurers. In order to make them ‘competitive,’ government will need to subsidize people’s insurance, this is due to the fact that, unlike what liberals and other who have not worked in the private sector would have you believe, profits account for a small percentage of added costs to health insurance consumers. So you have a government-subsidized health care option… hmmm, sound familiar? So if the federal government ends up setting health care rules and subsidizing a non-profit entity that will very quickly become the third largest insurer (or larger), couldn’t this be called a ‘public option’? What a federally administered or subsidized health care co-op creates is the foundation for a future government takeover of health care… the co-op plan is but a toehold.

Of course, there are no details yet and some of my long-term predictions may be off, but to make a co-op competitive it is likely that we are looking at some sort of federal government subsidy. A co-op will not satisfy the far left unless it involves some heavy government backing and all it will do is compete with private insurers without insuring many of the currently uninsured. The liberal administration and Congress is simply trying to once again get its hands on private industry. Note that cooperative and commune are very similar terms… let’s make sure we keep up the pressure on those who want to turn America into one big commune/communist state.

-AG