Timothy Noah writes:

"Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who persuaded Baucus to substitute the public option with funding for nonprofit health care cooperatives, waxed rhapsodic about the health systems in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Japan, which provide benefits through "not-for-profit insurers" like his proposed co-ops. But he neglected to point out that these foreign nonprofits enjoy an advantage the Baucus plan doesn't deliver. In France, Switzerland, Germany, and Japan, it is in most instances against the law to provide basic health coverage on a for-profit basis."

What Conrad got wrong was much more than that. France actually provides benefits mostly through a universal, single-payer insurer, the Sécurité sociale, which is just what it sounds like: a government-run program.

Other insurance is available as a "supplement", which is what it's called, and many people take advantage of having some of this to supplement the universal coverage, mostly to go to a fancier doctor or hospital of choice. It's not, as people often claim, mostly to get out of lines, since there aren't generally long waits under the French single-payer basic coverage.

So Conrad claiming that France "provide(s) benefits through "not-for-profit insurers" like his proposed co-ops" isn't just absurd for the reason you claim, it's also totally false because the vast majority of French coverage is a government-run, single payer system that these only supplement.

I swear, the more I read about what my fellow citizens write about coverage here in France, I realize that almost no one actually knows how it works, even those praising it.