NU Online News Service, Jan.21, 3:54 p.m. EST

WASHINGTON–A health insurance trade group urged Democrats today to focus their health care reform legislation efforts on cost containment and preserving the current role of agents, brokers and consultants.

Janet Trautwein, chief executive officer of the National Association of Health Underwriters Healthcare, said the surprise election of a Republican to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts should lead the Democratically-controlled Congress and the White House to open negotiations on bipartisan health care delivery reform legislation.

Such a measure should key in on health care cost reduction, and improving quality, choices and access, she said.

Her comments came as President Obama late yesterday accused health insurers of taking advantage of people. In his remarks he acknowledged that the election of Scott Brown to a Massachusetts Senate seat ended the Democrats' super majority and created a need to scale back the scope of the present House and Senate health care reform bills.

"I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on," the president said.

And, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, indicated that one way to win enough Republican support to get the bill through was to focus on areas that have broad support, for example, ending the practice by some insurance companies of terminating consumers' policies when they get sick.

These comments were made as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., met with Sen.-elect Brown today.

After the meeting, Sen. Reid said that, "I had a pleasant meeting with Senator-elect Brown and I look forward to working with him. We have many issues to address over the coming year including helping our struggling economy, keeping families in their homes and creating jobs for out of work Americans.

"It is my hope that Senator-elect Brown will work with us to address these many issues as we move forward," he added.

In his comments last night, President Obama said, "We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people."

Specifically, he said, "We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don't, then our budgets are going to blow up."

And, the president said, "we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance to their families. Those are the core — some of the core — elements of, to this bill."

In her comments, Ms. Trautwein said one reason the president has had trouble winning public support for his bill is that the negotiation policy and process of the previous health bills did not come close to dealing a variety of important issues.

She mentioned reasonable reform of the individual and small group market, reasonable tax credits, subsidies and expansion of Medicaid as a means of adding more people to the health care insurance rolls.

Ms. Trautwein said the current House and Senate bills don't deal well with ensuring "greater personal responsibility" for health care decisions.

She also criticized decisions to cut the subsidy afforded Medicare Advantage beneficiaries as a means of financing the bill and said a provision creating a long-term-care entitlement program should be deleted.

The bill, she said, should be paid for through "responsible financing that encourages good health, not financing reform on the backs of those who already have private coverage," i.e., through the excise tax the current bills impose on health insurers."

NAHU, said Ms. Trautwein, opposes the employer mandate imposed through current bills and she added that health care reform is "far too important an issue to be done in any way other than a bipartisan fashion."

For NAHU members, she said, "one of the most important elements of reform must focus on containing the long-term growth in medical care, which is what drives insurance prices.

"Unless and until we have the resolve to make reforms that reduce the underlying growing costs of health care delivery–whether or not insurance is involved–proposals to expand access to insurance will just redistribute costs and continue to fall short," she said.