Player Profile: Karen Ignagni

Courtesy Who Runs Gov

If President Obama is going to succeed in passing meaningful health-care reform legislation this year, he’ll need Karen Ignagni on board.

As president of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), Ignagni is the voice for the companies that offer health, dental, disability and long-term care coverage to millions of Americans. She’ll play a key role in negotiating any legislation that changes the way those companies do business.

Ignagni spent a career looking at benefits from a variety of angles; as a costs analyst, a Capitol Hill staffer, as senior staff at the AFL-CIO and, for more than a decade now, as the representative of the insurance industry in Washington.

The industry has been accused of torpedoing the 1993-1994 Clinton health-reform effort, and all eyes are on Ignagni to see whether she helps send the Obama plan toward the same fate.

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