[hyperman1]

Belgian healthcare started like that. First, workers personally kept apart a part of their wages. Then people in 1 factory pooled their money together. Then clusters of factories united into 'verbonden', a union-like construct . These where, like a lot of things at the time, grouped by world view:. Christian, socialist, ...

After a while, the governement wanted in, joined the verbonden to landsbonden (Country level insurers grouped by world view) and put themselves in the money stream.

The end result is Belgium having a weird construction half way between private health insurance and country-level health insurance.

[jonasdegendt]

> ‘verbonden’

Co-op is the word you’re looking for. These co-ops went far beyond just healthcare after all. They owned bakeries, pharmacies, entertainment facilities for the workers, …

[hyperman1]

There isn't really a good translation, the concept doesn't really exist in other countries. They have aspects of unions, co-ops, governemental and political organisations. In the past, they had their own legal status. Today, the EU forced them to become real corporations, and e.g. had them split of the travel aspects from the health insurance aspects.