Now it’s “Co-operative” health insurance?

Officials from both political parties reached across the aisle in an effort to find compromises on proposals they left behind when they returned to their districts for an August recess.

Hurrah! Here comes SnoweCare!  (Gee, I feel so reassured!)

Obama had sought the government to run a health insurance organization to help cover the nation's almost 50 million uninsured, but he never made it a deal breaker...

Oh, really?  (And BTW, AP, “50 million” = bogus number.  Do your research.)

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that government alternative to private health insurance is “not the essential element” of the administration's health care overhaul.

And I am Marie of Romania.  (Can you say “walk back”?)

Under a proposal by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., consumer-owned nonprofit cooperatives would sell insurance in competition with private industry, not unlike the way electric and agriculture co-ops operate, especially in rural states such as his own.

I don’t have a philosophical objection to co-ops (provided they don’t get special treatment), but let’s not confuse “consumer ownership” with “accountability.”  Hint: Seniors, think AARP.

With $3 billion to $4 billion in initial support from the government...

And if co-ops are such a good idea, why do they need billion$ in subsidies?  More cash for Friends of Nancy & Barak?

...the co-ops would operate under a national structure with state affiliates, but independent of the government...

...and everybody else, except for their administrators.  Think AARP.

[Sebelius:] “You don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing.”

What “new marketplace”?  It isn’t as if we haven’t had private health insurance all along (although it’s unsurprising that a government apparatchik would be unaware of it).  And why not trust the private companies?  It isn’t as if the government is that much more trustworthy...

UPDATE 090817 17:11:

Related:  If the government plan screws up your care, who’s accountable?  (Can you say “sovereign immunity”?)  “alexthechick” has some nuts-n-bolts questions, here and here.

(Quotes from AP Story hosted at Yahoo! News.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 14:36:14 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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