Top insurance lobbyist: August key in health drive

WASHINGTON (AP) _ August will be a make-or-break month for the drive to revamp the health care system, as members of Congress use the recess to either sell the need for an overhaul to voters or continue attacks on the insurance industry, the chief of the insurers' main lobbying arm said Monday.

Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, told editors and reporters from The Associated Press that recent broadsides against the industry by President Barack Obama and other leading Democrats are designed as a distraction as the health care debate becomes more contentious.

Rather than continue those attacks, lawmakers should use the summer break to emphasize the need to reshape the system, which she and many others on both sides of the debate agree is becoming unaffordable for government, business and many families.

"If August is about villainization" and lawmakers don't tell their constituents about the changes that can be made, "that will mean members of Congress will come back to Washington without a strong sense that health care reform is doable. And that would be a lost opportunity,"' she said.

"We think health care reform is going to be won or lost in August," she said.

The August break has so far seen numerous town hall meetings held by Democratic lawmakers disrupted by boisterous opponents. Democrats have said many of the problems have been instigated by industry-backed groups, but Ignagni said, "None of those people you've seen on TV are ours."

The insurance industry says it favors bipartisan changes in the health system, but is battling a proposal at the core of Democrats' blueprints: Creating an optional, government-run health insurance plan. Democrats say public coverage would push costs down by competing with private insurers.

Ignagni, though, said the plan would drive insurance companies, hospitals and doctors into bankruptcy, leaving only the government to provide coverage, often called single payer. Obama and other Democrats say they have no intention of setting up such a system.

"It is a very short step to a single payer, and that's what this whole discussion is about,'' she said. Despite Democrats' claims that private insurers would continue to compete for business, "the reality is it's never going to work that way,'' she said.

Months ago, the insurance industry proposed easing restrictions it has long had on issuing policies, such as refusing to cover people who are already sick or charging them higher rates. In exchange for dropping those limitations, the industry wants health care legislation to require that nearly all individuals purchase insurance coverage- a proposal Democrats are pushing and which would bring insurance companies millions of new customers.

Joining an expensive lobbying battle that is already under way on the nation's airwaves, Ignagni's association has launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign on national cable TV backing a bipartisan overhaul. The commercial states that if everyone is covered, "the words 'pre-existing condition' become a thing of the past.''