At a rally for single-payer health care yesterday afternoon, Dr. Quentin Young of Physicians for a National Health Program warned that Americans ought not buy into the  insurance industry's purported support for universal coverage. Indeed, evidence of their profit-oriented values can be found right here in the Prairie State, where the industry is lobbying against State Rep. Greg Harris' health care reform measure, which Wonk Room's Igor Volsky highlighted last night.

In an interview, Harris tells Volsky how that the insurance industry is using "every procedural trick in the book" to kill his Health Insurance Consumer Protection Act (HB 3923), which would rein in unfair insurance industry practices by imposing some regulations on the individual insurance market. Listen here:

Encouragingly, lawmakers withstood the pressure and the measure moved through the House and onto the Senate last Friday. If adopted, the bill would nix the practice of using certain health records to block coverage, allow doctors -- not claims reviewers -- to determine if some treatments are "medically necessary," and give an independent Office of Consumer Health authority to trump unwarranted rate increases or rejections of insurance claims. Perhaps most important to the national reform agenda, the bill would mandate that 75 percent of health insurance premiums and fees go towards health care costs as opposed to marketing, executive pay, or shareholder profits.

Reforming the private market should be an urgent concern. Over 30 percent of Illinoisans under 65 went without health insurance for some part of 2007 or 2008, according to a Families USA report released today.

To keep the momentum going both in Illinois and Washington, citizens will have to apply pressure to rival the insurance industry's influence. As Harris tells the Wonk Room, the future of health care reform hinges on whether lawmakers will side with consumers or the insurance industry:

You’re really going to have to stand up to some powerful interests to get done and people are going to have to make a decision -- where are your votes going to be as a legislator? Are they going to be to protect consumers or are they going to be to protect an industry giant?