Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, is fighting back against what she calls a Democrat-sponsored attack on her industry.
AHIP has been vocal about its desire to help America transform its healthcare program, offering a plan of its own a year ago. In addition, Ignagni was invited to attend the White House summit this spring to launch reform plans. But things have taken a turn for the worse, she said.
"At this point in the summer of 2009, the country should be in the midst of a transformative national conversation about healthcare reform," Ignagni said during a Tuesday press conference. "Instead, a campaign has been launched to demonize health plans and the men and women who work hard every day in their communities to provide health insurance coverage to more than 200 million Americans."
"Attacking our community will not help get anyone covered, nor will it help our country bend the cost curve and make care more affordable for working families and small businesses. These are the issues that should be the focus of a national conversation this summer. That is what the country expected. Not politics as usual, but an effort to forge the consensus that will be necessary to get reform passed," she added.
Ignagni said AHIP doesn't support a government-run plan because it would dismantle employer-based coverage, bankrupt local hospitals and make it impossible for Americans to keep the coverage they have.
Democrats have said they believe a government-run health plan option would help to "keep private health plans honest" and create a more competitive pricing market. AHIP and Republicans have argued it will put health plans out of business.
AHIP said earlier this year it would support removing pre-existing conditions as a reason for health insurance exclusion, as long as healthier individuals were mandated to join the health insurance pool.
Congress is at work on a 1,000-page comprehensive reform package that would put major limits on the health insurance industry's "cherry picking" of healthy beneficiaries.