Ezra Klein: Co-Ops Solve Political, Not Policy Problems

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/co-ops_as_an_alternative_to_th.html
IIRC Blue Cross started as a co-op - then turned itself into a for-profit!

Ezra Klein - Co-Ops as an Alternative to the Public Plan

The theory of the public option relies on the insights of the single-payer folks and the demonstration of Medicare, not to mention foreign systems: A robust public insurer can do a better job holding down costs and delivering access to high-quality care than a fractured private insurance system.

Obviously, a lot of people don't like these ideas. Among them are insurers, Republicans and, crucially, providers like doctors and hospitals, who fear that a large public insurer will hold down costs, which will in turn hold down incomes. They have argued, credibly, that they can unite and kill a bill that contains a strong public option.

In early June, Max Baucus asked Kent Conrad to solve this argument. Conrad came up with the co-op proposal. And I literally mean "came up" with it. Conrad told me that the idea emerged "out of conversations in my office after we were asked to see if we couldn't come up with some way of bridging this chasm." To put it bluntly, the co-op does not solve a policy problem so much as it solves a political problem. That political problem was, "How do you finesse a compromise on the public option?"

Seems like the Dems are finally switching strategies now that it's clear that co-ops won't work for anyone but Kent Conrad.

man all this healthcare angst is gonna be the death of me!