Co-op In Spotlight For Insurance Plan
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<strong>United Agricultural Benefit Trust Spotlighted As Model For Healthcare Cooperatives</strong>
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Private insurers can screen out people more at risk
for serious illness, hedging against the danger of expensive and
frequent medical bills, said Jamie Court, president of Consumer
Watchdog, a Santa Monica group that monitors insurance practices. The
fear is that co-ops will attract high-risk people who would otherwise
go uncovered, which could bleed a co-op's funding dry, he said. Court
also maintains that the co-ops' small size would work against them if
operating on a scale as large as Sen. Conrad's proposal. "Co-ops are
simply too small to have any real bargaining power," he said.
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