Fix Health Care Policy

Side Effects: Obamacare’s CO-OPs Put Taxpayer Dollars at Risk for No Good Reason

Yet another provision of Obamacare is expected to cost taxpayers more than they expected. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) asking for details regarding the probable loss of $3.1 billion out of the $3.4 billion in Obamacare loans to its Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (“CO-OP”). The estimate comes from the President’s Budget Appendix, and the committee is considering rescinding funds that haven’t already been obligated.

The Obamacare initiative gives CMS the authority to award $3.4 billion in loan subsidies to states to fund start-up costs and to help meet state solvency requirements for the health plans in the CO-OP initiative, The Committee’s letter explains that these loans are a bad investment for taxpayers: “[T]he amount of expected losses is estimated to be about $3.1 billion of the $3.4 billion appropriated (91 percent). These losses exceed the estimate HHS presented in its proposed rule.”

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: bad investment, CMS, Co-Op, House Energy and Commerce Committee, President's budget appendix, taxpayers

Morning Bell: No Matter What You Call It, It’s Still Just Government-Run Health Care

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced that the health care legislation he is drafting will include a government-run health insurance plan, or as many on the left like to call it “the public option.” The new wrinkle that Reid has thrown into the proposal is an “opt out” clause which would require states to pass legislation by 2014 rejecting participation in the federal government run plan. None of the committees in the House or Senate ever even voted on this new opt out scheme. But that does not really matter. Whether it is first implemented through a co-op, or a trigger, or an opt out, the end goal is the same: government-run health care for all Americans.

Hotel Harry Reid: Reid provided very few details for his “opt out” proposal, but here is what we do know: the government run plan would be available on the first day that major provisions of Obamacare would take effect in 2013, and states would have until 2014 to pass legislation declining participation in the program. This means that a one-vote majority of obstructionists in one chamber of a state legislature, by refusing to act, can consign a state’s residents to an eternity of government-run health care. In 17 states Democrats control both houses of the legislature and the state house. In another 24, Democrats control at least one legislative chamber or the governor’s mansion. That leaves a total of only 9 states where Republicans run the entire show — Texas, Utah, South Carolina, South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Idaho, Florida, and Georgia. That means Americans in 41 states are all but guaranteed to have no choice but to endure the government run health plan. What opt out really means is: You’re already checked in, and if you don’t do so by 2014, you can never leave. (more…)

Tags: Co-Op, government-run health care, Obama Health Care Plan, opt-out, public option, Trigger

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio)

“Whether you call it a public option, a trigger, or a co-op, the fact is all of these proposals put us on the path to government-run health care.” — (October 26, 2009, FoxNews.com)

Tags: Co-Op, opt-out, public plan, Trigger

Don’t Be Fooled by Sen. Baucus’ Acronym

“When I use a word,” says Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” “it means just what I choose it to mean.”

Members of Congress have this down to a fine art. Take the health care legislation recently introduced by Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat and Finance Committee chairman. Some say the senator made a bold decision in not including a government-run public option in his proposal. Indeed, he seemed to be responding to the many people who see the public option as politically divisive and merely a Trojan horse for a single-payer health system.

But instead of embracing a “public option,” he included a “co-op” as a way of ensuring that Americans would have a familiar and effective alternative choice to traditional health insurance. (more…)

Tags: Co-Op, Max Baucus

Don’t Let Co-ops Become a Trojan Horse

According to today’s Washington Post, the Senate Finance Committee will soon produce a health care plan that rejects “a government-run health insurance plan in favor of a network of member-owned cooperatives.” More commonly referred to as “co-ops”, these organizations actually already have a long and proud tradition in many sectors of the U.S. economy, including health care. But Americans must be wary that our nation’s co-op tradition does not become a vehicle for government-run health care.

To some, the word “co-operative” may have a slight Bolshevik whiff to it, but actually a private co-op is nothing more than private individuals exercising their right to voluntarily self-associate. From farm bureaus to barn-raisers, private co-ops are part of American society. In the realm of health care, a group that organizes coverage provided by private insurers could be structured as a co-op. Or the health insurer itself could be a co-operative owned by its member policyholders. Those kind of insurance companies are called mutual insurers.

Understood in this manner, co-ops have far more to do with Edmund Burke and little platoons than with Leon Trotsky and manning the barricades. And they can be part of the health care solution.

But, don’t be fooled; Burkean little platoons are not what the Obama Administration and its allies in Congress have in mind. In liberal Washington today, leaders such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), are talking up co-ops that would be: (more…)

Tags: Co-Op, Senate Finance Committee