White House says health-care bills contain cost-cutting remedies

By Shailagh Murray
The Washington Post
November 26, 2009

Critics of the Democratic bills point to cost control as a chief deficiency. Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, said the Senate bill includes only “pilot programs and timid steps” to reform the health-care delivery system, “given the scope of the cost challenge the nation faces.”

Unless lawmakers institute changes across the entire system, Ignagni said in a statement Wednesday, “Health costs will continue to weigh down the economy and place a crushing burden on employers and families.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/25/AR2009112503474.html

AHIP president Karen Ignagni says that unless lawmakers institute changes across the entire system, health care costs will continue to weigh down the economy, placing a crushing burden on employers and families. There could not be a more explicit admission that the private insurance industry is not and never has been capable of controlling our very high health care costs. Yet their administrative excesses along with the administrative burden they place on the delivery system are major sources of waste in our health care system.

We need everyone covered, and we need costs controlled in a system designed to provide us greater value. Neither will occur under the proposal before Congress. Although the private insurance industry can’t do it, an improved Medicare program would be designed specifically to accomplish those goals, and at a much lower administrative cost.

Karen Ignagni says that the lawmakers must institute the necessary changes across the entire system (because the insurers can’t). Let’s join her in demanding that Congress take the actions necessary, and then thank her for her efforts, as we dismiss her superfluous industry from any further obligations to manage our health care dollars.