This follows from related posts on the Insurance Claims and Issues Web Log, http://www.abajournal.com/blawgs/insurance_claims_and_issues/, and from this well-researched newspaper article by W.J. Hennigan and Katie Linthicum, "Healthcare: Roads to Reform/United Agricultural Benefit Trust Spotlighted as Model for Healthcare Cooperatives" (Los Angeles Times Online, Thursday, August 6, 2009). The author of the post that you are reading at this moment, however, is the only person who wrote this post. The views expressed belong to the author.
It appears likely that Healthcare Cooperatives are too small to succeed on a national scale as an alternative to a Public Health Insurance Option. That is all but certain even before opponents of a Public Health Insurance Option divert attention and interest to Cooperatives instead.
When Healthcare Cooperatives fail because they simply will not adapt to the conditions imposed by a nationwide group of Insureds, and as a foreseeable result Health Claims are not paid or delayed, will their current proponents then propose that they be statutorily immunized from liability for their nonpayment? Is this another "ERISA" waiting in the wings, whereby HMOs and Health Insurance Companies are effectively absolved of responsibility for the damages they inflict upon people? See generally Dennis J. Wall, "Litigation and Prevention of Insurer Bad Faith" Chapter 11 (Second Edition Shepard's/McGraw-Hill; 2009 Supplement in process by West Publishing).
Or instead, if Healthcare Cooperatives are adapted to the nation at large anyway, regardless of the fact that their success if any depends on their comparatively smaller size when compared to Health Insurance Companies, are they in essence being set up for inevitable Bad Faith and Unfair Dealing and other extracontractual Claims because they simply cannot pay so many of the nation's Health Claims in the first place? See generally Dennis J. Wall, supra, Chapter 9.
It seems pretty clear that Healthcare Cooperatives work best when they are comparatively small. For the United States as a nation of Health Insurance Insureds, Health Cooperatives are not a good choice. They are not even an echo of a good choice.
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