The Business Blitz on Health Care

Business groups plan to spend up to $10 million on television commercials that will urge Congress to start over on health care reform.

A coalition known as Employers for a Healthy Economy will run its ads on national cable television networks starting Wednesday and then turn to 17 states that are home to House members who could determine the fate of the legislation.

The message is that businesses are struggling, and employers thought Washington officials understood that creating jobs should be their top priority. Instead, one ad maintains, the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers are ramming through health care legislation that will add billions in new taxes, impose new mandates on businesses, and cause health care costs to increase, not decrease.

Members of Employers for a Healthy Economy include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Retail Federation, two national trade associations representing the construction industry, and 243 other groups and businesses. Money for the ad buy will come from members of the coalition, including insurance companies.

The coalition contends the health care bill being pushed by President Obama will raise costs for businesses, not lower them, as the president maintains. The legislation fails to go far enough to reduce overall health care costs, the business group contends. Plus, it argues that new taxes on insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and medical-device manufactures will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher insurance premiums. And, finally, the group says that mandates to cover employees will stifle hiring.

The bill will “do more damage for manufacturers than good,” said Jeri Kubicki, vice president of human resources policy for the National Association of Manufacturers.

“This is a bad bargain, no matter how many arbitrary deadlines are thrown at this,” said Neil Trautwein, vice president of the National Retail Federation.

A recent survey of human resources directors at large employers found that 80 percent expect the current health care reform bill will increase the cost of insurance at their companies, according to the HR Policy Association.

More than one third of human resources executives who expect higher costs as a result of the legislation predict costs will go up by more than 10 percent.

The ad by Employers for a Healthy Economy will be competing for viewers’ attention with ads from pro-health care reform groups and with an ad from the health insurance industry itself. Obama in recent days has been citing sizable premium increases by insurers as the reason why health care reform needs to be enacted.

Supporters of health care reform protested today outside the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, where America’s Health Insurance Plans—the trade association representing insurers—is holding its annual national policy forum.

In her opening remarks, AHIP president and CEO Karen Ignagni said insurers agree the current health care system is unsustainable.

“The current debate about rising premiums has demonstrated that, in fact, we have a health care cost crisis in this country,” she said. “Unfortunately, the path that has been followed is one of vilification rather than problem-solving.”

Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Obama is “clearly fixated” on the insurance industry because “he’s looking for a villain.”

But the president’s focus on insurers is “treating the symptom and not the disease,” Trautwein said. The high cost of health insurance is due to the high cost of medical care, he said, and hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies have a lot more to do with that than insurance companies. The current health care reform bill fails to address these cost drivers in a serious way, he said.

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Kent Hoover is the Washington bureau chief for bizjournals.