One of the provisions of the landmark Affordable Care Act of 2010 was to have each state establish a non-profit health insurance CO-OP (Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan) for its individual citizens and its small businesses (under 50 employees), who would otherwise not be eligible to join a group plan from the big insurance corporations. Oregon's version of this co-op was called Health Republic, which was started in 2014. Funded by the then-Democratic controlled Congress with a five-year operating loan to help it get up and running (called rhe "risk corridor"), Health Republic grew to 14,000 members within the first year and was projected to start turning a profit by 2015. Individuals like me, who couldn't get health insurance under the pre-ACA (Obamacare) world, were now able to get covered.
Along with Health Republic's marketing director, Cheryl Vandemore, I helped create an ad campaign to get the word out to small employers and individual Oregonians about this new insurance option. Our tagline: "People. Not Profits."
It went great for that first year of its operation, growing its
member base rapidly (as I said, up to 14,000 members) and on schedule to regularly pay back its five-year
operating loan to the Federal Government. Unfortunately, when in 2015 the new Republican-controlled
Congress attempted unsuccessfully to repeal the ACA for the 67th time,
they were able to cut funding for the loans to the startup-up
insurance co-ops in the states and prematurely called back the startup
operating loans. This forced Health Republic in Oregon and all those similar co-ops in the other states to shut down, leaving millions of Americans without health insurance again. Ah, democracy!
But we were all quite pleased with the ad campaign: And enthused about the possible new world we thought we were entering.
