Health co-op offers model for overhaul

Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound is one of the country's few surviving health insurance cooperatives, and it has recently embraced electronic medical records and a collaborative model of primary care. Those innovations have made the Washington state-based Group Health a prototype for a political compromise that could lead to a bipartisan healthcare deal. After a month of brainstorming, including briefings from Group Health executives, the Senate Finance Committee seems poised to propose private-sector insurance cooperatives as its primary mechanism for stoking competition and slowing the growth of medical costs.