Co-ops aren’t a solution
The co-ops proposed for national health insurance reform are a joke. They will not provide real competition for private insurers.
Private insurers know it would be nearly impossible for a health co-op to get off the ground for many years, if ever.
A co-op that could compete would need millions of members. Where would they come from? A competitive co-op would need thousands of physicians and scores of hospitals. Where would they get them? A competitive co-op would need serious start-up capital and management expertise. Where would they get that? The near-impossibility of this enterprise will leave the private insurers in control. They will be able to continue looting our health care system and driving it to ruin.
The only kind of business that could provide real competition to private insurers is a well-designed public health insurance option, something like a Medicare plan into which we could all buy. It could assemble the doctors and hospitals needed to attract patients. It would have the power to negotiate decent prices with doctors and hospitals.
That’s why the private insurance industry is so hostile to a public option.
They like the health insurance marketplace just the way it is. For years, they’ve been able to work it so that they could relentlessly boost premiums and cut benefits.
For the past decade, private insurers passed almost all increased medical costs straight through to us, the patients and families.
For example, 10 years ago, $1,000 deductibles — sticking beneficiaries with big medical bills — were rare. As the decade comes to an end, $5,000 and $10,000 deductibles are now popping up all over the place. These deductibles are so high that medical bills can bankrupt patients and their families before the insurers pay anything.
Without competition, private insurers are set to drive our health insurance system straight into the ground. After $10,000 deductibles will come $15,000 and, then, $20,000.
In a few years, many health insurance policies won’t be worth the paper that they’re printed on and large numbers of Americans will be buying all their health care with cash or credit cards. What care many can’t afford out of their own pockets, they won’t get.
We need to tell Congress to quit joking around and get us real competition for private insurers. Our nation’s health-care system and the well-being of the public depend on it.
X Ramon Castellblanch is an associate professor of health education at San Francisco State University. He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.