Wellpoint chief calls for reform, defends insurers

The top executive of Wellpoint, a major health insurer, called for health reform at a meeting of the Economic Club in Indianapolis Tuesday, WTHR, the local NBC affiliate, reports. "The high and rising cost of health care in America is just not sustainable …" said CEO Angela Braly. Those costs pose "a real threat to the social and fiscal obligations of the government and to the health and prosperity of the American people." However, she also maintained the insurance industry's perspective and rejected the public insurance option. "Sounds a lot like the Fannie Mae for health care and I think we all know how that experiment is going," she said (Rader, 9/1).

Braly also maintained that the focus on insurance in efforts to lower costs is misguided: "Three cents of every health insurance premium dollar collected go toward insurer profits, while 87 cents go toward medical care, Braly told her Economic Club of Indiana audience," according to The Associated Press. "If you completely eliminated insurance industry profits, which is clearly the aim for some, you will pay for two days of health care in America," she said (Murphy, 9/1).

---

This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.