DR. DAVID ORES pays $700 a month for an apartment in a low-income housing complex on Avenue B on the Lower East Side, owns two Harleys and has on his left arm a tattoo of a naked woman wearing a pink cowboy hat.

Dr. Ores is also a physician who runs a nonprofit health care cooperative for city restaurant workers that he sees as a model for how national health care could work. The undertaking, which he began last summer, is particularly timely as President Obama contemplates an overhaul of the nation’s health insurance system.

Image Dr. Ores began a test run of the program last summer, and 15 restaurants signed up. Credit... Brian McDermott

“It’s like a food co-op,” Dr. Ores, 51, said of the project. “Except it’s health care.”

Under the plan, he charges each restaurant a dollar each month for every seat in the establishment and pools the money. In return, any employee from those restaurants can visit him free of charge, whether for a cut finger or the flu.