NORMAL -- If Congress doesn't create a public option to compete with the health insurance industry, then health care reform legislation may as well be called "the insurance industry profit protection act," a former industry insider-turned-reform advocate said Tuesday night.

Americans need the option of buying government-run insurance, said Wendell Potter, senior fellow on health care with the Center for Media and Democracy and a former vice president of CIGNA Insurance Co.

Potter spoke at a health care reform forum at Illinois State University's Bone Student Center. It was co-sponsored by The League of Women Voters of McLean County, Campaign for Better Health Care, Interfaith Social Justice Network and the Student Health Information Management Association.

Other speakers were Shirley Drazewski, executive director of the Community Health Care Clinic; Roger Hunt, chief executive officer of BroMenn Healthcare System; and Jane Turley, instructional assistant professor at ISU's department of health sciences.

About 200 people attended the forum, and many who spoke during the two-hour-plus event favored a government option.

But Jeff Flessner, president of Benefit Planning Associates in Bloomington, asked why there were no insurance industry representatives on the panel. Insurers need to be a part of discussions regarding health care reform, he said.

Potter said the health insurance industry is controlling much of the debate nationally with a massive public relations campaign designed to derail meaningful reform, just as the industry did during previous reform debates. There has been an increase in people who are uninsured and underinsured while industry corporate executives have grown rich diverting health care dollars to administration instead of care.

"What we have in this country is Wall Street-run health care," Potter said. "We need to have something that competes with them."

Drazewski said that since January, the community clinic for the uninsured has received 1,700 applications from potential patients.

Hunt did not agree with all of Potter's points but said: "Change has to happen. Our health care system is about to run into the wall."