The front page of yesterday's New York Times confirmed it: Group Health Co-operative has become the poster child for those on the Senate Finance Committee (like Sen. Maria Cantwell) who are pushing the so-called "co-op compromise" for health care reform.

The Times, highlighting some of the 62-year-old Seattle health care provider's innovations (electronic medical records and collaborative care among them) wrote:

On Capitol Hill, those innovations have made Group Health a prototype for a political compromise that could unclog health care negotiations in the Senate and lead to a bipartisan deal. After a month of brainstorming, including briefings from Group Health executives, the Senate Finance Committee seems poised to propose private-sector insurance cooperatives—instead of a new government health plan—as its primary mechanism for stoking competition and slowing the growth of medical costs.

So what's this co-op compromise all about, exactly? And is Group Health really a good model for the nation?

Easy questions to ask, but the hard part in answering them is that once you start examining any of the various reform plans now emerging from a small handful of key committees in Congress (including, of course, Finance, with its emerging plan for co-ops), you end up in very wonky, knotty, and—most difficult of all—hypothetical territory.

I know because last week I tried to dive into the co-op compromise and ended up with a three-part (1, 2, 3) blog mostrosity that attempted to look at whether Group Health is indeed a good model for the rest of the nation. Obviously not the most thrilling tale on the blog last week, and not as well-told as the Times story, but I did arrive at many of the same conclusions that the Times delivered yesterday.

The shared conclusions, in no particular order: 1) Group Health is not, technically, a co-op. 2) Nevertheless it does have a member governance structure, which is nice. 3) However, the end result is that Group Health is still run a lot like your average insurance company and doesn't save its clients all that much money. 4) Which is not to say Group Health doesn't offer great care. 5) It does, and important innovations, too, innovations that the rest of the country can learn from. 6) But experts say it's still not a workable model for ready-on-day-one health care reform. 7) Because, for starters, it took Group Health 62 years to get to the size where it could be this effective. 8) And even if you could snap your fingers and create a bunch of Group Healths all over the nation starting next year, they still wouldn't have the economic leverage of a national, government-backed health insurance program (aka, the "public option").

From the Times:

“The idea that these things will spontaneously erupt all over the country is just completely a dream,” said Timothy S. Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.

Keep in mind, though, that the Finance Committee, while right at the center of all the planning for a new American health care system, is not the only big player within that center. Committees in the House have also been hard at work on health care reform, and they're currently pushing plans that include a public option. Same for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, whose plan Paul Krugman praised yesterday as both workable and historic. Krugman's headline: "HELP is on the Way."

Which, of course, is only true if the Finance Committee's unrealistic co-op plan, and its ill-considered use of Group Health as a potential model for nation-wide reform, isn't allowed to hijack the process.

Jody Hall—owner of Seattle's Cupcake Royale, fiesty health care reform advocate, and a voice you'll hear in an article about Cantwell's Finance Committee followership in this week's Stranger—wrote to me this morning saying:

Calls to Cantwell are especially critical now. It's so close!

It's true. This is the time when the system we're all going to live with for many years to come gets made. It's wonky and complicated, sure. But it's your health and your money that's on the line.