Rocky's benefits plan lacks support

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson's firm position on his domestic-partners benefit plan isn't gaining much traction, even among groups who usually back the mayor's ideas.

In fact, Anderson's staunch opposition to opening up health-care options to a wider array of city employee dependents is being panned by health-care advocates, who say the mayor is sacrificing greater health-care access at the altar of gay rights.

Those advocates favor a new City Council proposal, which would create an ordinance offering employees who have other dependent relationships — like parents living with adult children, adult siblings, even roommates — the ability to access health-care benefits for those dependents.

That plan would also keep benefits for unmarried couples and their children, said Councilwoman Jill Remington Love, who plans to bring the ordinance to the City Council before year's end. That ordinance would supersede the executive order Anderson signed Wednesday giving unmarried domestic partners of city employees access to health care.

Anderson has opposed the council plan, saying it avoids the political statement he wants to make on equal rights for gay and unmarried couples and could cost too much.

However, health-care advocates — some of the mayor's biggest supporters — say the mayor should support the plan that offers health care to the most people.

"The more people you can get covered the better," said Dr. Scott Leckman, a local physician who has been outspoken about creating a universal health-care system. "With so many people uninsured I welcome any chance to get more people covered."

And while they might personally favor gay rights, advocates don't want the political issue to impede offering greater access to health care.

"We're just sympathetic to covering the most people in the most cost-effective way possible," said Jodi Hillman, health program director with Utah Issues. "The kind of statement the mayor is trying to make, it's funny, it does take us away from the issue we are trying to work on."

On that point Dr. Joseph Jarvis, president of the Utah Health Alliance, agrees.

"Health-care reform is an issue for everybody whether they're gay or not," he said.

Even advocates in the gay community say they support opening up health-care options to a wider range of people, at the possible cost of diluting a political statement on gay rights.