When is a co-op not a co-op?

When it's "federally controlled, federally funded, and federally staffed."

From Michael Leavitt, former head of HHS:

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."

You don't have to be a farmer to recognize the pig behind the lipstick but apparently it doesn't hurt.

Comments welcome.

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