One of the battle cries during the set up of the ACA, aka Obamacare, was that for profit health insurers were way too expensive. Because, you know, profit. It's obvious to all that the profit must make things more expensive, innit? So, a series of cooperatives to provide that health care insurance were set up. There's two problems here. Much as we love cooperatives ourselves the obvious feature of hem is that they've not got any capital. They thus need to grow into a market position rather than just leap into trying to be a large player in a capital hungry industry like insurance. For their capital comes from retained earnings, rather than having some capitalists providing capital: that's rather the point of them. That these coops did try to leap in and become large players in a capital intensive market means they're all going bust.

Nonprofit co-ops, the health care law's public-spirited alternative to mega-insurers, are awash in red ink and many have fallen short of sign-up goals, a government audit has found.

Under President Barack Obama's overhaul, taxpayers provided $2.4 billion in loans to get the co-ops going, but only one out of 23 -- the one in Maine -- made money last year, said the report out Thursday. Another one, the Iowa/Nebraska co-op, was shut down by regulators over financial concerns.

The audit by the Health and Human Services inspector general's office also found that 13 of the 23 lagged far behind their 2014 enrollment projections.

The probe raised concerns about whether federal loans will be repaid, and recommended closer supervision by the administration as well as clear standards for recalling loans if a co-op is no longer viable. Just last week, the Louisiana Health Cooperative announced it would cease offering coverage next year, saying it's "not growing enough to maintain a healthy future." About 16,000 people are covered by that co-op.

Wise observers like Dennis the Peasant were predicting that this would happen. But they're also not cheap:

Separately, the AP used data from the audit to calculate per-enrollee administrative costs for the co-ops in 2014. It ranged from a high of nearly $10,900 per member in Massachusetts to $430 in Kentucky.

Wouldn't everyone prefer a few rapacious capitalists trying to rape the citizenry for profit than admin costs per scheme member of $10,900 a year? Further, can you actually imagine a for profit company allowing bureaucracy to balloon out to such an extent?