The health insurance division of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors is voicing its opposition to a government-sponsored health plan as a part of any national health care reform.

The Association of Health Insurance Advisors said in a statement that it believes the private health insurance system is “best equipped” to provide options to individual and commercial clients, and said it is concerned that the public plan is a “major step down the road toward a single-payer, government-run health care system.”

Recently, Nancy Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said that an agreement on the constructs of a public plan are coming together to meet the goals of President Barack Obama’s plans for national health care reform.

“I’m actually very hopeful that we’ll be able to reach an agreement on that because it is part of the president’s plan,” DeParle said at a recent health care forum. “If you’ve heard him talk about it, the reason it’s included is because he wanted a mechanism to lower cost and to keep the private sector honest.”

Robelynn H. Abadie, AHIA president, said that promoters of a government-run plan option “always state or imply that a government-run plan that eliminates the role of the agent will lower administrative costs.”

“But administrative costs are not reduced simply by switching administrators – a government plan will not be less expensive unless services are reduced in some as yet ill-defined way,” Abadie said in a statement.

The AHIA believes that licensed, fairly compensated insurance agents offer a cost-effective means of achieving personal and professional assistance in insurance selection, the group said.

“Experience of agents has shown that most consumers benefit from access to professional assistance,” said Abadie.

The group has thrown its support behind the goal of universal health care, as outlined in its publication “Rx for Health Care – The Advisors’ Perspective,” and coordinated efforts to control escalating costs, enhancing health information technology and supporting medical malpractice reform to reduce defensive medicine, according to the statement.

AHIA members are NAIFA members actively involved in the sale of group and individual health related products.