White House and Insurance Industry Answer Critics on Health Care Reform

Thursday, Aug 06,2009, 12:28:46 PM Click:

Both the White House and the industry of health insurance have taken the time to respond to attacks they receive in the debate on health reform. The White House went to what was a one-platform message - the Web - to meet what it considers inaccurate criticism. And on behalf of insurers, Karen Ignagni, president of the America's Health Insurance Plans, responded to the accusations of infamy the insurance industry has faced.

White House to return to what worked during the two year presidential campaign has struck back at assailants. In a video, a reform of the health director of communications, Linda Douglass, made a computer-side chat, refuting claims that the Internet, for example, President Barack Obama seeks to eliminate private insurance. "It is very important for you to have the facts," she said to his online audience. "The country has been waiting for decades for action, and we're not going to drop at this time .

While the White House aired the Web video on its blog, Ignagni was responding to criticism of the industry, which she called a campaign "to demonize health plans" -- much of which has emerged from the Obama Administration and its allies in the congressional leadership. In remarks to journalists, Ignagni said, "The same old Washington politics of 'find an enemy and go to war' is a major step backward, not a step forward. Indeed, this is the playbook of consultants, not consensus."

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently called insurers "villains" and "immoral." Her party has increasingly begun highlighting insurers as the enemies of reform. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Finance Committee, said after an Aug. 4 meeting in the White House that "too many companies are taking advantage of way too many Americans."

Ignagni -- a veteran of the health-reform debates of the early 1990s, during which she represented the industry in a general opposition of Clinton Administration's efforts -- rebutted that. She pointed out the industry favors many of the proposals in the reform legislation and was among the first groups to pitch them.

"Our proposal brings everyone into the system, guarantees coverage for all Americans, does away with pre-existing condition limitations and ends rating based on health status and gender," she said. But AHIP is a vigorous critic of the government-run insurer -- known as the "public option" -- that is a central component of the Democrat-favored reforms. "A government-run plan would inevitably rely on its price-setting ability to offer artificially low premiums -- effectively subsidized by the private sector through cost shifting," Ignagni argued. "This would force employers to drop their coverage, creating a death spiral for private insurance and financial catastrophe for many hospitals and doctors."

Ignagni said that the more the public learns more about the reforms, the more the public is opposed to them. But Baucus argued that when people are told that it was on the reform of health insurance, "it becomes very popular."

(Jesse A. Hamilton, Washington bureau manager: Jesse.Hamilton@ambest.com)