They have rented offices and zero customers. All their capital is borrowed. They’re trying to sign the kind of expensive, chronically ill individuals that insurers have avoided for decades. In three weeks they face mighty competitors with a hundred times the resources.
But the 24 insurance-company startups created by the Affordable Care Act say they’re ready to battle the establishment, stay in business and change health care.
“What we’re doing is a big part of the ACA story,” said John Morrison, president of the National Alliance of State Health CO-OPs. “We bring a completely different paradigm to health care finance. We’re not interested in making as much money as we can. We’re not interested in making profits. What we are interested in is making consumer patients healthy and saving money.”
via Obamacare Insurance Co-ops At The Starting Gate – Kaiser Health News.
Good luck with that!
This all sounds pretty familiar to me; changing the world; not interested in money; doing what others can’t. It’s familiar because I lived through this in the 1980s with non-profit HMOs with the same goals and with federal money. They are all gone now and were in a few years after starting with a bang. Serving on the boards of directors of four such plans and working with a half-dozen other plans, I observed one major flaw. The non-profit mentality is fatal. As well-meaning as they may be, these folks don’t think, make decision or act like businessmen. They don’t have a stake in the hard decisions or the motivation.
You can have all the wonderful goals you want – in this case “making consumer patients healthy and saving money,” but you can’t do that if you are not in business. When I hear they are not interested in making money, I worry. If you don’t make money you are not going to pay for “expensive, chronically ill individuals.”
What they should be asking is HOW ARE WE GOING TO SAVE MONEY AND PAY BACK OUR BORROWED MONEY AND MAKE PATIENTS HEALTHY IF WE DON’T ACT LIKE A FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANY?
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Sounds like your friend is getting ripped off with high premiums and large deductible.
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Mr Quinn.I have a friend working for a big company. She is single .She makes about 50k a year. She says she pays about $200 a week for her insurance at her company. She has $7000 deductible. Please exlain the possibility of the 9.5% rule.
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This doesn’t add up. At those prices and deductible she is virtually self-insuring her coverage. As long as her premium for the lowest cost plan from the employer exceeds 9.5% of her income she may be eligible for a subsidy under an exchange plan, but even if she cannot get a subsidy she may well find less expensive and more generous coverage in the exchange. It’s worth checking out and now is the time to do it.
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