AHIP's Campaign for an American "Solution" sent me a link to a transcript of a recent live web chat on health care reform with Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, and Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans. Ignani's answers make a joke of Pollack's attempts to make common cause with these creeps.

Ignagni and the people selecting the questions make some classic moves:

When in doubt, don't answer the question:

MarinCA asks: Do your organizations support a public plan option? Why or why not?

Health insurers pull a fast one in proposed reform

The industry says it will treat all people fairly in return for a government requirement that everyone has to buy their product. But they want to charge different prices for different levels of coverage ...

...Yet if you read the fine print in their plan, it turns out that they're reserving the right to charge different prices for different levels of coverage -- a practice that would effectively keep us where we are, with sick (or potentially sick) people paying more for insurance.

A Health Plan for All and the Concerns It Raises

“There’s no way to run a side-by-side competition within the current structure,” said Karen Ignagni, the chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s trade association. If the unstated and eventual goal of the public plan is to push private insurers out of the way — a de facto nationalization of health care — “let’s have a debate on a government-run system,” Ms. Ignagni said.

You know what? She is absolutely right.

Levey, for reasons best known to himself, puts out this remarkably tone deaf report on the healthcare debate. I say this because in addition to the usual fear mongering, there are no quotes from any single payer advocate. Fourteen of the 93 cosponsors of HR 676 are from California, and that does not count newly elected single payer advocate Jackie Speier. Moreover, single payer legislation has passed the California legislature twice, only to be vetoed by the Gropenator.