August 17, 2009 11:11AM # About Those Health Care “Co-Ops”… By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) --- SHARE Having Congress charter a health insurance “cooperative” is just another way of creating a new government-run program that would drive private insurers out of business. The definition of a cooperative is a health plan governed by its enrollees. Since a government chartered co-op won’t have any enrollees at first, it will be governed like any other government program. So when the Obama administration and congressional Democrats say, “We’re going to create a co-op,” what they mean is, “We’re going to create a new government health program but we will turn it over to the members in five years. We promise.” As I explained in a recent Cato study, a government-chartered co-op would become just another [Fannie Med](https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa642.pdf): > It makes no difference whether a new program adopts a “co-operative” model or any other. The government possesses so many tools for subsidizing its own program and increasing costs for private insurers—and has such a long history of subsidizing and protecting favored enterprises—that unfair advantages are inevitable. Who was it that said that thing about putting lipstick on a pig? ##### Related Tags [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).