By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Love the new warning from the U.S. insurance industry: Employer coverage is dead if the Obama administration passes a government-run health care plan.

In other words, the insurance industry that's gotten rich off Americans for decades doesn't want more competition -- competition that might drive down prices and improve health-care outcomes.

America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, in a letter, essentially claim the government would run the private providers of insurance out of business.

Yet President Barack Obama correctly attacked that kind of reasoning at his Tuesday press conference.

It's preposterous, he said, to claim on one hand that the government can't do anything well, yet claim this incompetent government will be able to run an entire, monied industry out of business.

The insurance industry has the perfect right to yelp about the problems it might run into if the government gets more deeply into the health-care business.

But Obama is correct to continue plugging ahead on what a government-run system might offer, what it might cost and how it might compete with the private insurance industry.