Health 'Co-ops' Are Government Care
Originally Posted At Wall Street Journal
By MICHAEL O. LEAVITT
August 20, 2009
Responding to a building wave of opposition to the "public option," the Obama administration is now signaling that it may dress up government health care in yet another set of clothes. This time, it will be called a health insurance "co-op." Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) is floating the idea, Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) has offered his initial support, and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has listed three conditions it needs to meet.
Mr. Schumer's conditions are a national structure, federal financing, and a ban on federal appointees who have ties to the insurance industry. This "co-op" would be federally controlled, federally funded, and federally staffed. Expressing his opposition to smaller organizations and his demand for a national "co-op," Mr. Schumer says, "It has to have clout; it has to be large." He adds, "There would at least be one national model that could go all over the country," which would require "a large infusion of federal dollars."
I'm quite familiar with real co-ops. As a teenager, I filled my family's tractor with fuel purchased at a farmer's co-op, which was organized by local people to solve a common problem. My family got its electricity from a rural electric co-op. I was later a director of an "insurance reciprocal," a form of a co-op. Co-ops are a part of American culture: people uniting to solve common problems. What the Democrats are proposing bears little resemblance to this.
The Democrats are insisting that their version of a "co-op" wouldn't be government-run health care, but I ran Medicare and Medicaid as secretary of Health and Human Services, and I know this isn't true. When Washington provides the money, names the directors and ultimately pays the bills, government controls health care. Lobbyists will lobby, Congress will respond, and bureaucrats will decide who gets care, what drugs are prescribed, what procedures are covered, and how much money providers can charge. This is true for Medicare, it's true for Medicaid, and it would be true of Mr. Conrad's "co-ops."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is from Iowa farm country. He knows co-ops, and hopefully he also knows a plan for a government takeover when he sees it. He's said he's against a "public option," no matter what it's called. Yet Senate Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, describing what he wants out of "co-op" legislation, spoke plainly, as reported by Politico earlier this summer, when he said, "It's got to be written in a way that accomplishes the objective of the public option."
Our health-care system needs real reform. We need to abolish the unfair tax that favors employer-sponsored insurance over self-purchased insurance. We need to foster a more vibrant private market with greater competition and choice. We need to make prices transparent and give consumers more freedom to pursue health-care value.
Every American needs to have access to affordable health insurance. But we don't need a "public option" that would jeopardize the employer-provided insurance of millions—an option that employers would be able to choose at their employees' expense. And we don't need the government running a bunch of so-called "co-ops," rationing care at taxpayers' expense.
The Democrats are getting worried that the Trojan Horse they have offered in the form of a "public option" has been spotted for what it is. So now they are looking for a new way to get government-run health care through the gates.
Let none of us be co-opted by their latest ploy.
Mr. Leavitt, former secretary of Health and Human Services (2005-2009), has served as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and as governor of Utah (1993-2003).
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