UPDATE: Cooperation Enters the National Discussion on Healthcare

Good idea?  Bad idea?

Heck, i’m just excited to see this being seri­ously con­sid­ered on the national stage.  Adopt­ing a coop­er­a­tive health care sys­tem in this coun­try isn’t exactly tak­ing baby-steps, but it is intro­duc­ing the con­cept, and the ideals, to the standard-American whose sole source of new ideas is what comes down the pipe and into their TV sets.  Most view Conrad’s co-op pro­posal as a com­pro­mise to the par­ti­san dead­lock over how to address health­care, rather than a solu­tion to our cur­rent health­care cri­sis.  But “Conrad’s Com­pro­mise” goes beyond party line-dancing and offers some real solu­tions, pri­mar­ily, a vision for a health­care provider that would actu­ally have the best inter­ests of the pub­lic at it’s core, and would have inter­nal mea­sures to ensure that it always stayed that way.

There are more arti­cles to read, but not much.

From the NCBA:

As Con­gress debates what shape health care reform will take, the coop­er­a­tive busi­ness model has entered promi­nently into the dis­cus­sion. Coop­er­a­tives save money for mem­bers by aggre­gat­ing demand for spe­cific ser­vices, whether it’s health insur­ance, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals or hos­pi­tal sup­plies. For exam­ple, in a health insur­ance pur­chas­ing coop­er­a­tive, con­sumers or busi­nesses can band together to pur­chase pri­vate health insur­ance poli­cies in bulk, pass­ing sav­ings along to mem­bers. Coop­er­a­tive health care providers also save money for mem­bers because, in addi­tion to buy­ing in bulk, the not-for-profit coop­er­a­tive does not answer to out­side investors.

Here’s some vid of the man with the plan:

Here’s what the naysay­ers are start­ing to say:

UPDATE from NCBA (empha­sis is mine):

June 26, 2009

Dear mem­bers and friends of NCBA:

Con­gress and the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion are in the midst of intense nego­ti­a­tions over the way in which our coun­try will have access to afford­able health care.

Two weeks ago, Sen­a­tor Kent Con­rad (D-ND) pro­posed using health insur­ance coop­er­a­tives as a means to achieve this reform. Conrad’s plan would estab­lish a consumer-owned, non-profit health insur­ance coop­er­a­tive in every state. Those states with smaller pop­u­la­tions could join into regional coop­er­a­tives to aggre­gate the nec­es­sary pur­chas­ing power.

To those of us who have long advo­cated for coop­er­a­tives, this is very excit­ing. Yet this sort of atten­tion also poses chal­lenges to our busi­ness model that we should be aware of.

One of our con­cerns is that these insur­ance coop­er­a­tives wouldn’t reflect the def­i­n­i­tions of a true coop­er­a­tive. Mil­lions of peo­ple will be con­fused if a health insur­ance provider is called a co-op but is not membership-owned and –controlled.

There’s also cause to be con­cerned about the poten­tial fail­ure of a coop­er­a­tive health insur­ance plan. Many health pol­icy ana­lysts, jour­nal­ists, blog­gers and mem­bers of Con­gress have ques­tioned the coop­er­a­tive busi­ness model’s capac­ity to deliver health care to the unin­sured, and have harshly con­demned any­thing other than a pub­licly financed plan.

As the lan­guage of the debate inten­si­fies, it’s para­mount that we remind all those involved that, whether or not health care reform takes place with a coop­er­a­tive model, the busi­ness model itself should not be the sub­ject of attack. The coop­er­a­tive busi­ness model has lifted mil­lions of peo­ple out of poverty, deliv­er­ing unavail­able ser­vices from elec­tric­ity to organic food; it should not bear the brunt of an intense polit­i­cal and media fight.

No mat­ter where we sit on the polit­i­cal spec­trum, we have an oblig­a­tion to defend our coop­er­a­tive model.

NCBA is mak­ing sure this hap­pens on a national level. We’re work­ing with Sen­a­tor Con­rad and other mem­bers of Con­gress to ensure sev­eral points are incor­po­rated into any health cooperative:

1. If the term coop­er­a­tive is used, the busi­ness must be a true coop­er­a­tive. It must be based on our seven prin­ci­ples, con­tain our com­mon val­ues and be owned and con­trolled by its members.
2. A fed­er­ated sys­tem, where local or state coop­er­a­tives are part of a larger coop­er­a­tive, should not be ruled out. These types of orga­ni­za­tions have been suc­cess­ful in other co-op sectors.
3. Fed­eral dol­lars, whether through loans or grants, are crit­i­cally impor­tant in any such cooperative’s devel­op­ment. This is con­sis­tent with pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment efforts to help estab­lish cooperatives.
4. Such a large num­ber of health care coop­er­a­tives will need a sim­i­larly large amount of tech­ni­cal assis­tance for their devel­op­ment. NCBA is in the posi­tion to pro­vide Con­gress access to a wide net­work of pro­fes­sional coop­er­a­tive devel­op­ers and spe­cial­ists around the coun­try who have expe­ri­ence set­ting up cooperatives.
5. The unique tax struc­ture of coop­er­a­tives must be accounted for and accom­mo­dated in any coop­er­a­tive insur­ance proposal.
6. The coop­er­a­tive must have ade­quate pro­tec­tion from demutualization.

We’re also work­ing with the media to ensure that these points, para­mount to any dis­cus­sion about coop­er­a­tives, are not left out of the discussion.

We know that sev­eral health care coop­er­a­tives are oper­at­ing in the U.S. today with great suc­cess. And we know that in the past, sev­eral health care co-ops have failed.

We also know that the coop­er­a­tive busi­ness model does not have any “magic” that will rec­tify the foun­da­tions of a poor busi­ness plan. The real magic in a coop­er­a­tive lies in the peo­ple who are ded­i­cated to cre­at­ing a well-designed busi­ness that serves its mem­bers’ needs, with­out the inter­fer­ence of and oblig­a­tion to out­side investors.

Health care reform has caused a wave of inter­est in coop­er­a­tives, both in the pub­lic and in the media, and because of this, the co-op world has grown right­fully excited. But in order to pro­tect the pub­lic integrity of our busi­ness model, we’ll need your help.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Get the infor­ma­tion. Visit NCBA’s Web site, www.ncba.coop, and look on the home­page for the excerpt on health care from the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin’s study on the eco­nomic impact of coop­er­a­tives. You can also browse the “About Coop­er­a­tives” sec­tion of our site to learn about health care co-ops, and in the “News and Pub­li­ca­tions” sec­tion, under “News Releases,” you can view the pub­lic state­ments NCBA has made for the media.
2. Respond to the blog­gers. Any time you read some­one mis­rep­re­sent­ing coop­er­a­tive busi­nesses, or sim­ply dis­cussing them in a pub­lic forum, add your voice and coop­er­a­tive expe­ri­ence to the discussion.
3. Con­tact the media. Health care reform is a huge story right now, and media out­lets are happy to hear from the pub­lic. Call up TV and radio sta­tions to voice your opin­ion, and write let­ters to the edi­tors of pub­li­ca­tions that cover health care or co-ops.
4. Weigh in at your co-op’s board meet­ing or in your com­mu­nity groups.

This is a very excit­ing time for the coop­er­a­tive com­mu­nity, per­haps the only oppor­tu­nity many of us will have to make a fun­da­men­tal change in the direc­tion this coun­try. As NCBA con­tin­ues to work on the issue, we wel­come your input and assistance.

If you’d like to reach me, please e-mail me at info [Email address: info #AT# ncba.coop — replace #AT# with @ ].

Thank you.

In coop­er­a­tion,

Paul Hazen
Pres­i­dent & CEO

via NCBA