Created by the Affordable Care Act, the CO-OP program was designed to help create nonprofit, member-controlled health insurance plans that would offer ACA-compliant policies in the individual and small business markets. A 15-member advisory board made recommendations to HHS regarding grants and loans for CO-OPs.
Twenty-four states had CO-OP plans available in their exchanges starting in October 2014, but a large number of them have been forced to close.
The entire ACA is not in question.
November 3, 2015
More than half of the nonprofit health insurance co-ops (click here) formed
through the Affordable Care Act are now off the market for the coming
year, with the last-minute departure of a plan in Michigan.
On
Tuesday, two days after the start of the new enrollment season in
insurance exchanges created under the health-care law, the Web site of
Michigan’s Consumers Mutual Insurance posted notice that it will not
sell coverage for 2016.
That co-op becomes the 12th plan to fail
in the past year — and the ninth this fall — out of the 23 that opened
at the start of 2014. The plans have offered an alternative,
consumer-oriented type of coverage that the ACA envisioned as
competition for traditional health insurers
