Today, ThinkProgress interviewed Time reporter Karen Tumulty at the White House Health Summit. Tumulty, who just published a personal account about the disadvantages of purchasing health insurance in the individual market, attended a break-out session with America’s Health Insurance Plans CEO Karen Ignagni. According to Tumulty and pool accounts from the session, Ignagi proposed to outsource health care reform to an independent commission:

The break-out session that I was just at, in fact, Karen Ignangi made one of the more radical specific proposals, which is to take most of this out of the hands of Congress, set up a commission sort of like the Base Closing Commission, to come up with a plan and present it to Congress on a sort-of take it or leave it basis.

Watch it:

Ignagni’s proposal is revealing. With Democrats running the major health reform committees — Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) at Senate Finance, Henry Waxman (D-CA) at Committee on Energy and Commerce — the insurance industry probably believes that it can get a better deal out of (and have more influence over) some kind of commission.

AHIP, which strongly opposed President Clinton’s plan, remains publicly committed to comprehensive health care reform. At today’s summit, Ignagni told the president, “we understand that we have to earn a seat at the table…you have our commitment, to play, to contribute and to pass health care reform this year.” Still, the industry opposes key parts of Obama’s health care proposal and it’s unclear if it’s willing to sacrifice profits for progress. (Coincidentally, Tumulty’s article describes how insurance companies game the individual market to avoid paying-out large claims.)

As Tumulty suggested, “I think we’re all going to learn over the next few months, how and whether the environment really has changed all that much since 1994.”

Today, Rick Scott, the front man and funder of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR), talked up his agenda with Kathryn Jean Lopez of the National Review. After being asked about his view of health care reform, Scott touted his experience as a hospital executive as a model:

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Why are you stepping up to the health-care plate now?

Richard L. Scott: America is ready to improve health care. I believe there needs to be a strong advocate for patients’ rights, someone who has worked in the health-care industry. I hope my experiences focusing on reducing costs and improving outcomes can help ensure that any health-care proposals that are implemented focus on choice, competition, accountability, and personal responsibility.

In 1987, Scott didn’t start his hospital business for the sake of improving the quality of care, but rather wanted to “do for hospitals … what McDonald’s has done in the food business.” Indeed, through an aggressive strategy of rapid acquisitions and consolidation, Scott made his Hospital Corporation of America/Columbia Hospital Corporation into one of the largest health care companies in the world. Forbes magazine noted Scott ruthlessly bought “hospitals by the bucketful and promised to squeeze blood from each one.”

Carefully omitted from his official profile is the fact that under Scott’s leadership, Columbia/HCA plead guilty to a massive array of fraud charges – which resulted in a fraud settlement of $1.7 billion dollars, the largest in U.S history. Columbia/HCA systematically defrauded taxpayers, charging Medicare $15,000 for Tiffany pitchers and other luxury goods, “exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating,” and engineering a program where doctors were granted partnerships in hospitals as a kickback for referring patients. In 1997, Scott resigned in disgrace.

Read more

Editor’s Note: Igor Volsky is attending the White House health care summit today. Here’s his first dispatch from the event.

Obama struck a populist tone in his opening address at the White House Health Summit. The event was an opportunity for different stakeholders — insurers, drug companies, business groups –- to reinforce their support for some kind of reform.

But this is really as much about visuals as it is about substance.

All of the interests are now in the same room, sitting next to each other, listening to the president as he commits the nation to enacting comprehensive health care reform by the end of this year.

But not all groups were treated equally. Obama invited all of the stakeholders to the table, but he took some pronounced rhetorical shots at the special interests that stalled previous reform efforts.

He specifically blamed the insurance lobby for swallowing up Clinton’s plan and warned that this time, no one group can dominate the conversation.

In some ways this is really a challenge. Obama is challenging interests on the left and the right to act on reform and to sacrifice for it.

Conservative members of the House of Representatives, including Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Phil Gingrey (R-GA), are hitting the airwaves to bash President Obama’s ambitious health reform proposals. They’re calling themselves the “Health Care Rapid Response Team.”

But a new analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund finds that, in the states where these members come from, hundreds of people are likely losing their health insurance each day by becoming unemployed or losing their jobs.

View all 50 states here.

A previous study by the Center for American Progress found that 14,000 people lost their health insurance every day in December and January, with losses continuing as unemployment rises.

Families USA recently released an analysis showing that “86.7 million people—one out of every three Americans under the age of 65—was uninsured for some period of time during 2007 and 2008.”

Maybe the “Health Care Rapid Response Team” should stop going on TV and start rapidly responding to the health care crisis.

Today, President Obama kicks off his effort to reform the health care system with a White House Health Summit. The administration is billing the event as an effort to bring the different stakeholders — the insurance industry, drug makers, business groups and consumer advocates — all into one room to agree on common principles of reform.

The Obama administration has vowed to inject transparency into the reform process and has indicated (in its budget and elsewhere) that it is open to considering Republican proposals. In fact, all of the major stakeholders have expressed enthusiasm for the Summit:

- Bill Gradison, ran old Harry & Louise ads: My impression is that there’s been a real openness to reach out to diverse interests, not leaving anyone out — which is how a lot of people felt back in the 1990s. . . . They seem to have learned the lessons of what not to do this time.” [WP, 3/5/2009]

- Karen Ignagni, AHIP: The stakeholder community is no longer organizing to say ‘no.’ [USA TODAY, 3/5/2009]

- Chip Kahn, Federation of American Hospitals: “This is a different day. I think among most of the stakeholders, everyone wants to see this work. There is a tremendous feeling that it’s time.” [AP, 3/5/2009]

The camaraderie may be short lived. If the final solution is seen as threatening to industry profits, some stakeholders will likely fund their own front groups to attack reform. But for now at least, the gang is sticking together. Everyone wants a seat at the table to influence the final legislation.

Unfortunately, conservative ideologues are playing a different game. The Heritage Foundation, Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, and Fox News (among others) are actively misrepresenting Obama’s proposal.

Today, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, the $20 million smear effort funded by disgraced Columbia/HCA Healthcare CEO Richard Scott, published a full-page ‘Open Letter To President Obama’ in the Washington Post.

The letter accuses Obama of providing “virtually no details on your [health care] plan itself,” recycles the Right’s big-government talking points, and asks the president to share the details of his plan to “allay our fears and end the speculation.”

Of course, if detailing the plan could stop the attacks, then Scott can click the ‘Plans’ tab on his own group’s website and download Obama’s proposal or Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) 98-page vision for reform.

But the details of the plan won’t matter. The Right will continue to box Obama’s proposal (which actually incorporates the values of competition and choice) into a familiar big-government narrative. The goal here is to echo the same message of attack (over and over again) and hope it sticks. Define Obama’s proposal before he can define it himself.

Today, the administration begins its pushback.