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Bob Graham is executive editor at Insurance & Financial Advisor and IFAwebnews.com.

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The U.S. House, or at least the Energy & Commerce Committee, is readying the executives of 52 of the nation’s largest health insurers for a perp walk in the Democrats’ latest effort to convince America of how evil insurers are.

Perp walks (short for perpetrator) give TV and newspaper photographers their one chance to get an image of a suspect as he is whisked (cops I knew used to slow down to a crawl) from the police station to jail to await trial. Perp walks used to be the norm, but today, because courts saw how they could prejudice the potential jury pool, are much less frequent.

Congress got wise to this reality and appears ready to use perp walks to secure more public sentiment against insurance companies and to fuel another push for health insurance reform.

As an article at IFAwebnews.com points out, the House committee is seeking information on compensation paid to the executives at the largest health insurers. The committee is seeking information largely available through public records and hardly secret since most of the companies are public. They are probably too busy taking heat at home at town hall meetings on health reform to bog themselves and their workers down with digging into records.

Here’s the Democrats’ playbook: The papers executives will sent to the House will be put into a comprehensive report on the salaries, bonuses, deferred compensation, excessive premiums, etc., most likely to be leaked to the New York Times a day before its public release. The report will aggregate numbers, failing to realize that CEOs of health insurance companies probably deserve the huge paychecks, which are commensurate with that paid to other executives.

Of course, as it bailed out the American auto companies and AIG, Congress took issue with their executives’ compensation.

Once disclosed publicly, members of Congress will rail against these “excessive” compensation packages for insurance executives. “We need to hold hearings to get to the bottom of these incredible compensation packages,” Democrat X will say. Others will join in the chorus, leading to hearings in late September.

At the hearings, the perp walk of executives will occur over a few days. With Americans suitably riled up about insurance premiums and paychecks, President Obama will further push for health reform, saying it’s the only way to keep these barons in check. Democrats will agree, knowing they have enough votes to secure “reform.” A few weeks later, the Kennedy health reform initiative (it’s going to have his name on it sooner or later) will pass and insurance will change forever.

And like the perp walks of criminals in the old days, no one will ever really care if the subject of the perp walk was guilty or innocent of the crimes for which he was charged.