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Alternative to a Government Plan
Non-governmental, member-owned health-care cooperatives may well be a reasonable alternative to a government plan. The general public does not know enough about cooperatives but, given the uproar over health-cost reform, we should slow down and learn more about how they work. Current examples of cooperatives include the Group Health Cooperative in the state of Washington, Health Partners in Minneapolis and ACE Hardware. Google "healthcare cooperatives" and read about this member-owned idea.
Citizens are suspicious of the government's ability to run health care, no matter how well-intentioned the government might be. Medicare, Medicaid, the Post Office, Amtrak and Social Security are all on life support, and all are government run.
We need to slow down, consider different incentives that would result in private insurance companies structuring plans differently and carefully investigate how cooperatives could be structured so that they would contribute to an overall solution to our health care dilemma.
By
Colleen Conway-Welch
|
August 21, 2009; 10:01 AM ET
| Category:
Cooperatives
,
Health Care Reform
,
Health costs
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Posted by: patrick_f_dye | September 2, 2009 2:21 PM
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This is really disingenuous. This person should be required to disclose her conflicts of interests. To portray this person as a nurse or health care academician obfuscates her pro-business ties and allegiances. Why does it not say at the top that she's a highly compensated director for both a for-profit bank and a hospital group? Her pro-business, anti-government views make much more sense when you consider these facts.