Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The heads of health insurance and pharmaceutical trade groups were among those visiting the White House as President Barack Obama pushed Congress to overhaul health care, White House records show.

Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, visited eight times, meeting twice with Obama and once with economic adviser Lawrence Summers. Former U.S. Representative Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, had two meetings with deputy chief of staff Jim Messina among 11 at the White House.

Ignagni’s group, whose members include Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc., is lobbying against efforts to include a public insurance option to compete with the private companies that are members of her trade association. Phrma, whose members include Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based Merck & Co., is pushing Congress to enact health-care legislation.

The visits were among the 1,615 posted on the White House Web site today as part of a periodic release of visitor logs that the Obama administration and its predecessors had sought to keep private.

Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, a coalition of labor and advocacy groups such as the AFL-CIO, and lobbyist Kenneth Kies, whose clients include the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, also visited the White House, records show. So did Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, the only Republican to support overhauling health care in the Finance Committee.

Edward Kennedy

Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who called health-care reform “the cause of my life,” was at the White House to meet with Obama on Aug. 12, two weeks before he died of brain cancer.

Other guests included Robert Rubin, a former Citigroup Inc. chairman, who visited twice. One of his trips was to see Summers, who succeeded him as President Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary.

Attending a May 5 meeting with Diana Farrell, deputy director of the National Economic Council, were Financial Services Forum President Rob Nichols, Credit Union National Association Chief Executive Officer Dan Mica, Financial Services Roundtable CEO Steve Bartlett, American Insurance Association President Leigh Ann Pusey, and Investment Co. Institute President Paul Stevens. The next month, Obama proposed his overhaul of financial-industry rules.

Colin Powell

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Obama, whom he endorsed during the 2008 campaign. Powell served in the administration of President George W. Bush.

General Electric Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt came once to see Phil Schiliro, Obama’s chief congressional lobbyist, the records show. T. Boone Pickens Jr., the billionaire energy investor and head of Dallas-based BP Capital LLC, visited the executive mansion three times, once to see Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone Group LP, the world’s largest private-equity company, visited three times, once to see Obama and another time to confer with Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, the records show.

Business Lobby

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, head of the nation’s largest business lobby, came to the White House 11 times. He supported the president’s $787 billion economic- stimulus package. Since then he has opposed Obama’s plans to curb the emissions blamed for global warming and to set up a financial consumer-protection agency.

John Castellani, head of the Business Roundtable, the association of chief executive officers of the largest U.S. companies, visited eight times.

Musician Jon Bon Jovi, whose real name is John Bongiovi, met with Obama senior adviser David Axelrod on June 11, and actress Kathleen Turner visited three times that month to met with Schiliro, the records show. Turner has advocated for reproductive rights on behalf of Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc.

The White House isn’t releasing the names of all visitors between Jan. 20, when Obama became president, and Sept. 15. Instead, it is sharing information in response to queries that were “reasonable, narrow, and specific,” according to the White House Web site. Today’s release covers visits before Sept. 15 -- when the new policy took effect -- that were requested during October.

Pressure for Release

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington pressed for release of records showing who was meeting with administration officials. In July, the group sued to force the Secret Service to release information about visits by coal company executives since Obama took office in January.

The first batch of names released in September included health industry executives who met with the administration to discuss his plan to overhaul health care, including Jeffrey Kindler, chairman and chief executive officer of New York-based Pfizer Inc., and Stephen Hemsley, CEO and president of Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group Inc.

Other White House visitors included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern, and Hollywood stars such as George Clooney, according to a list released in October.

The information is being made public at the end of each month and will include visits that occurred over the previous 90 to 120 days. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has said that 70,000 to 100,000 people visit the White House each month.

The public logs don’t include visitors whose names can’t be disclosed because of national security concerns or in cases where the visit is confidential, such as a presidential interview with a potential Supreme Court nominee. The records also don’t include personal guests of the Obama children.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at jsalant@bloomberg.net; John McCormick in Chicago at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 25, 2009 17:55 EST