May 28th, 2009

Reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

[Karen Ignagni], president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group representing more than a thousand insurers, was in Pittsburgh yesterday to discuss insurance issues with Highmark Inc.’s corporate members and customers.

She was front and center during the much-publicized health care “summit” earlier this year, at which health insurers pledged to reduce costs and end medical underwriting in exchange for a federal mandate that all Americans buy health coverage.

“You have our commitment to play, to contribute and to help pass health-care reform this year,” Ms. Ignagni told the president

…

Yesterday she said a national health insurance program — which she said would reimburse hospitals at lower rates for the work that they do, in order to reduce systemic costs — would force many of America’s hospitals into bankruptcy.

Both Medicare and Medicaid already underpay hospitals, paying less for a procedure than the procedure actually costs, she said.

A third program, operating in the same way, would be unsustainable.

“Go over to the hospital systems here and ask whether they can live on 80 cents on the dollar,” she said. “You’re going to have all of the hospitals here near bankruptcy in a very short period of time. [I] don’t think any member of Congress wants to preside over the bankruptcy of their hospitals in their hometowns … It’s not workable.”

Read more at the Post-Gazette.