Group Health Cooperative, (formerly known as Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound), later more commonly known as Group Health, was a

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

based nonprofit healthcare organization.

Business model

Established in , Group Health provided coverage and care for about 600,000 people in Washington and

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and W ...

Corporate structure

Despite being marketed as a

cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-contro ...

for much of the organization's history, Group Health never legally presented itself as a cooperative. It was a

nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

with members. Members were always able to amend bylaws and elect a

board of trustees A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organ ...

, but never owned organization assets or directly controlled operations.

Group Health Community Foundation A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic id ...

(GHCF) was funded with the acquisition with approximately $1.8 billion in assets. Founded in 1983, the new GHCF is entirely independent of

Kaiser Permanente Kaiser Permanente (; KP), commonly known simply as Kaiser, is an American integrated managed care consortium, based in Oakland