WellPoint CEO: care, not industry, should be repaired

WellPoint Chief Executive Angela Braly cast herself as an advocate for health-care reform during a speech Tuesday before the Economic Club of Indiana.

What she's not so crazy about is what she calls "health insurance reform" -- any new "public option" government health plan that could compete with WellPoint or other for-profit insurers.

"The debate in Washington has shifted from a discussion about health-care reform to health insurance reform," Braly said in a luncheon speech at the Indiana Convention Center. "We're hopeful that conversation will turn around."

Braly said health insurers already have proposed major changes to help improve health care and make it more affordable. Those include opening coverage to all people regardless of their pre-existing medical conditions, in return for a mandate that everyone buy health coverage.

She also pointed to WellPoint initiatives to better tie payment for medical services to the quality, not just the quantity, of care provided by doctors and hospitals.

A public option, she said, would leave commercial insurers at a competitive disadvantage. Government insurers such as Medicare or Medicaid typically pay for medical services at low rates, leaving health providers to demand higher rates from WellPoint and other companies.

Others, however, see WellPoint as part of what's wrong with American health care.

More than a dozen protesters stood outside the convention center carrying signs with messages, including "Insurance Profits are Bad for My Health" and "$1.2 million in lobbying last quarter" -- a reference to WellPoint's lobbying expenditure.

Bo White, Indianapolis, said health coverage should be a right, not a privilege. "It's just a moral issue," he said.

Another protester, Chuck Gillespie, Indianapolis, said a public option is needed. "I don't believe there will be much of a difference without one."

Health-care reform, particularly the possibility of a new public plan, has prompted heated debate nationwide.

Lawrence Mishel, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based labor-leaning think tank, said Tuesday in a letter to President Barack Obama that the creation of a new public option should not be negotiable.

"It simply relies on genuine competition (something absent from today's health insurance marketplace) between public and private plans to discipline against both complacency and inefficiency," he wrote of a proposed public plan.

After her speech, Braly dismissed the idea of using a public plan to increase competition. "You really can't have a level playing field with government as your competitor," she said.

Call Star reporter Daniel Lee at (317) 444-6311.