About 50 people attended last Friday afternoon's meeting at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where business groups were invited to discuss the state of play on health care reform on Capitol Hill.

The discussion was aimed at getting K Street's biggest trade associations on the same page with regard to opposing certain measures that are being considered in the House and Senate.

"There's an emerging consensus that the bills seem to be going in a way that we don't like," said chamber Vice President Randy Johnson. "We need to be more aggressive in making our views known to the committees of jurisdiction in a formal way. There will be stepped-up visits with possible allies in both parties on the committees of jurisdiction. Given what other groups are doing there's a need to step up the pace."

Representatives of trade groups were asked to get more directly involved in the health care debate this week as the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee begins to mark up a bill. Particularly, they were asked to send letters to Capitol Hill and the White House if the marked-up bill contains a public plan option and an employer mandate.

Health insurers and Republicans have been clear that they oppose a Medicare-style insurance plan for all, which was included in the initial drafts of the HELP committee's bill. The actual bill, introduced by the committee didn't contain either measure, to allow Republicans to offer their ideas, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn. said last week. Whether the HELP bill will contain such an insurance option isn't yet clear.

The business community is also against a measure that would mandate that employers provide health insurance and if they don't, require them to pay into a fund that would be used to help the uninsured get coverage.

"This meeting was not designed to build the anti-reform coalition or to replace existing reform coalitions," said one attendee. "Rather the meeting was designed to build a common communications front across industries and coalitions to help salvage positive reform from the punitive excess seen in many of the reform measures - if at all possible."

The public plan and the employer mandate aren't the only issues of concern to business groups, but for the moment these are the hot-button worries for many on K Street.

At least one attendee wished this meeting had occurred earlier this year. "I think this is terribly late," said one lobbyist who participated. "My druthers would have been to have these contingency plan discussions months ago." But he added that at least the talks are now underway. "Better late than never."

Separately, the chamber President Tom Donohue appeared on 'Fox News Sunday' yesterday saying that U.S. capitalism is threatened by new regulations and mandates, and highlighted his group's $100 million national ad campaign to warn Congress and the Obama administration that any new health care reform package and global warmining bills must not hurt the competitive position of American businesses, Politico reported.