'Cooperatives' approach to health insurance? (OneNewsNow.com)

'Cooperatives' approach to health insurance? (OneNewsNow.com)

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the healthcare measure being worked on in Senator Ted Kennedy's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee would cost about $1 trillion over ten years, but leave 37 million people uninsured.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) calls the HELP Committee bill "partisan" and predicts it would receive support from one Republican senator at the most because it contains a new government-run healthcare plan.


Grassley is working with 23 senators on the Finance Committee to come up with a bipartisan proposal that can reach the Senate floor before the July 4 recess. He believes a compromise floated by Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota) that would allow nonprofit cooperatives to sell policies may help win over Democrats who currently favor a public health insurance option.

"We're talking about along the lines of what we know about in the Midwest -- cooperatives," Grassley explains. "Maybe encouraging some cooperatives moving into health insurance the same way that maybe 150 years ago county mutuals got together to have fire insurance for farmers because nobody else would insure farmers because they were so far from a fire station. You know, things of that nature."

Grassley says since the beginning of the year, he has taken part in 59 meetings with senators and 87 meetings with constituents on healthcare reform, and has given ten speeches on the subject.