WellPoint wants to be heard in health care debate-WEB ONLY

Some of the country’s largest insurers are starting to raise their voices in the debate over reworking the nation’s health care system, and their message is clear: They must play a role for it to work.

WellPoint Inc. CEO Angela Braly on Tuesday told a Los Angeles forum the government and private industry need each other’s help in tackling the challenge of covering the uninsured.

Meanwhile, her Cigna Corp. counterpart, H. Edward Hanway, conducted a round of interviews and said insurers can add “a significant amount of value” to any solution.

“We are very serious about wanting to have people understand that we are committed to health care reform, and we’re going to be active in the debate,” Hanway said, adding that he and Braly didn’t coordinate their talks.

President Barack Obama has proposed setting aside $634 billion as a “down payment” on extending health insurance coverage to an estimated 48 million uninsured people, and he has made comprehensive health reform a top goal.

Insurers have said any reform should involve a requirement that all people carry medical coverage, with the government providing financial help to those who cannot afford it. Such a plan would spread out the risk for insurers providing coverage, and it would give them a large pool of new customers.

A previous health care reform push by former President Bill Clinton failed after Congress and the industry were largely shut out of drafting the reform bill.
The managed-care sector supports reform this time around because, as Hanway noted, the “world’s a lot different now.”

He pointed to the uninsured population as a reason for change, and he said health care costs cannot continue to rise the way they have the past few years. But he said insurers, hospitals, drug companies and all other parties involved in health care have to work toward the solution.

“You need everybody at the table here deciding, ‘OK, what’s the health care system in this country going to look like for the next 50 to 75 years,'” he said. “There’s a real willingness in our industry to do that. I don’t think there was in the Clinton years.”

Braly said a cornerstone for any reform push should be a health care system that rewards care providers for quality rather than quantity, according to a copy of her prepared remarks provided by WellPoint.

She said insurers can help emphasize quality and lower costs by encouraging doctors to follow guidelines for what works best identified by their peers.

Obama and many Democrats have endorsed a proposal that would give Americans the option of buying medical coverage through a government plan, as part of a broader overhaul.

But Hanway said that wouldn’t be necessary if all Americans were required to have coverage. He also noted that Medicare and Medicaid currently reimburse providers at lower rates than commercial insurers, and an additional government plan would strain care providers.

“That would seriously challenge the viability of physicians and hospitals to continue if it siphoned off a meaningful number of members from the commercial system, because there’s a huge cost shift that goes on today,” he said.