Health Cooperatives or Co-ops: News & Resources on the Alternative to the Health Care Public Option

Health Cooperatives

Here we attempt to highlight some of the more interesting and more important issues concerning Health Cooperatives in general.

Since we've recently gotten a number of hits and inquiries about Health Cooperatives, we've decided to provide some coverage to these kinds of cooperatives.

Health Cooperatives aren't our primary focus but it seems to us that those in Washington contemplating the cooperative model for health care could learn loads from what we have to say about Rural Electric Cooperatives and their pitfalls.

Don't misunderstand: We aren't opposed to Health Cooperatives; just those that emulate many of the bad practices, autocratic management and rampant corruption that is beginning to surface in the Rural Electric Cooperative industry.

Some of these links take you outside of the Coop Litigation News website so we aren't responsible for the content.

What is a Cooperative?

Definition

A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.

(Source: ICA Statement on the Cooperative Identity)

A cooperative is a business voluntarily owned and controlled by its member patrons and operated for them and by them on a nonprofit or cost basis. It is owned by the people who use it.

(Source: UWCC)

What is a Health Cooperative?

Cooperative Defined

A cooperative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.

Cooperative Principles

Cooperatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, cooperative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility, and caring for others. The cooperative principles are guidelines by which cooperatives put their values into practice: 1. Voluntary and Open Membership; 2. Democratic Member Control (one member, one vote); 3. Member Economic Participation; 4. Autonomy and Independence; 5. Education, Training and Information; 6. Co-operation Among Cooperatives; and 7. Concern for Community.

Health Cooperatives

Based on coop principles and values, people create different forms/models of health care cooperatives. One of the most known model is the user/client-owned model. User or client-owned health cooperatives are set up by individuals in the same community to help them meet their own health care needs. Members of the coop determine goals and practices, thereby enabling ordinary citizens to empower themselves with respect to health care. Members-owners each contribute shares of capital and subsequently contribute to operating costs, usually by prepaid premiums and appoint managers to negotiate contracts with health insurance and health care providers. Often these cooperatives purchase and operate hospitals and other facilities, and hire professional and other staff. Services range from simple preventive care and basic insurance to advanced curative and rehabilitative interventions. There are also cooperatives owned by health professionals and pharmacy coops. In fact, cooperatives are being used as the model in the social economy and the delivery of a wide range of social services around the world.

Community Health Centres that follow the cooperative model are non-profit organisations, owned and operated by the members who use their services. Members elect a board of directors who govern the center. Each member has one vote, regardless of the number of shares held by the member. Members and users are involved in defining the centre’s mission, mandates, goals, and the types of services offered. With the cooperative model, community participation can be facilitated through Board representation, committees of the Board, development of needs assessment, satisfaction surveys, fundraising, volunteer involvement etc. Community Health Centres that are not cooperatives provide similar programs and services as a cooperative, but the level of community membership and control is not as extensive.

Problems

Health Cooperatives Can't Work?

The Daily Kos
Sunday, July 28, 2009

Senator Kent Conrad likes Co-ops. Making Health Care Co-ops a reality is his pet project and his alternative to a Public Option. The President and others are starting to listen. Conrad's primal fear of a Public Option should come as no surprise: just in the 2009-10 cycle Conrad's received almost 3/4 of a Million $$$ in donations/bribes from "Health" PACs and industry-related individuals -- so far.

So he's pushing "Co-ops":

"[P]rivate, consumer-owned, non-profit cooperatives that would provide affordable health care to families, individuals and small businesses."

Conrad says this "bridges the gap" between the GOP-endorsed status quo and the Public Option. In fact, the Public Option is the compromise between the status quo and Single Payer. Conrad is a tool of the Health Insurance Industry. Let's get that straight.

Co-ops have a track record. A good one, that became a bad one, that's getting worse.

Some lawmakers said the White House had sent mixed signals, confusing friend and foe alike on Capitol Hill.

In the 1930s under The New Deal electric Co-ops were established throughout the Rural South to bring electricity to vast swaths of the country still virtually living in the 19th Century. They were wildly successful at first. They were a Godsend to millions of Americans.

Then, over the decades, the coal industry, the power industry, local "Boss Hoggs" and the lure of a different kind of Power infested and captured them.

Conrad's Co-ops will be political bodies whose Boards of Directors will be captured and populated by the politically-connected, powerful and wealthy. They'll be riddled with sell-outs, insurance industry shills and apologists. We'll see scandal after scandal develop in these things over the years as health insurance companies will pull out all the stops to pack them with "their people" and bribes, kickbacks, and all sorts of chicanery, both criminal and generally nefarious will eat-up these Co-ops like so many cancers. . . .

News

Alternate Plan as Health Option Muddies Debate

The New York Times
Monday, August 17, 2009

WASHINGTON — The White House has indicated that it could accept a nonprofit health care cooperative as an alternative to a new government insurance plan, originally favored by President Obama. But the co-op idea is so ill defined that no one knows exactly what it would look like or how effectively it would compete with commercial insurers.

What is certain is that, as a substitute for a government plan, the co-op concept disappoints many liberals and stirs little enthusiasm among insurers or Republican lawmakers.

And as the White House signaled its flexibility, a contentious debate over the merits of a public plan versus co-ops began playing out in the Democratic Party. Aides to Mr. Obama tried to tamp down concern on the left by emphasizing Monday that the president still supported the idea of a public plan and had not decided whether to drop it.

Some lawmakers said the White House had sent mixed signals, confusing friend and foe alike on Capitol Hill. . . .

This page was last modified on Monday, January 11, 2010

Coop Litigation News

Tracking Legal Events involving Electric & Telephone Cooperatives