With the struggle to pass comprehensive health reform legislation meeting the approval of both the House and Senate ongoing, one group is warning against smaller, piecemeal reform measures it says are on “the wish list of the insurance and medical industries.”

Consumer Watchdog, which bills itself as a “nonpartisan consumer advocacy group,” wrote a letter to President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), warning them such an approach would be akin to a Trojan horse for the industries.

One such approach would be “national” insurance plans, offering only minimal benefits and allowing insurers to “evade more protective state laws and state enforcement actions.” Another reform benefiting the industries, according to the group, are proposed changes in medical malpractice law that could prevent injured patients from “holding even very bad doctors accountable.”

The change in law would bar patients from receiving reasonable compensation for damage to their health and finances by a negligent doctor or hospital, while medical providers would have less incentive to prevent medical errors before they happen, according to Consumer Watchdog.

Both measures are being proposed by Congressional moderates, the group said, amid the tug-of-war to send t a comprehensive bill to the president’s desk.

“Passage of a broad health reform bill that aims toward universal health coverage is the only outcome that would make life more secure, and health care less expensive, for all Americans,” the group wrote. “But as political division tears apart Congress, there are growing calls for more piecemeal reforms. Even worse, we hear proposals in Washington to adopt, under the mantle of bipartisanship, ideas that are high on the wish list of the insurance and medical industries.”

Consumer Watchdog urged the nation’s leaders to “resist unbalanced compromises,” and instead recommended individual reforms, including no individual mandate for coverage, expansion of the Medicaid program, encouragement of broader state reform, allowing states to limit premium increases and barring insurers from marketing their policies only to the youngest and healthiest customers, and shedding expensive claimants.

“These are not the only effective or helpful possible reforms,” the letter concluded. “But together they offer a framework on which the states can act, with a baseline of market reform, active encouragement and some financial assistance from the federal government.”