Monday, August 17, 2009

Reason #594 Why Real Health Care Reform Is Needed

The "Co-op Compromise" won't work. The GAO confirms it.

The health care reform compromise that centrist Democrats and several Republicans have indicated they'd support has shown an inability to effectively lower premiums for consumers, a newly resurfaced government study shows. [...]

The U.S. General Accounting Office produced a report on cooperatives in March 2000 that was mostly sour on the idea. Using five different co-ops as examples, the study concluded that on the key function -- lowering the cost of insurance -- these non-profit insurance pools came up well short.

"The cooperatives' potential to reduce overall premiums is limited because (1) they lack sufficient leverage as a result of their limited market share; (2) the cooperatives have not been able to produce administrative cost savings for insurers; or (3) their state laws and regulations already restrict to differing degrees the amount insurers can vary the premiums charged different groups purchasing the same health plan."

Once again, I told you so. The proposed HMO/pharma bailout is just that: another ridiculous corporate bailout that does nothing to help any of us non-super-wealthy people.



We need real health care reform, not more corporate bailouts. Simple as that.

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