Consensus elusive on how to reform health care

Utahns' top mandate to lawmakers this session is to fix health care, but they believe legislators are as likely to harm the system as they are to help it, a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV survey shows.

An overwhelming majority of Utah households, 80 percent, believe something has to be done — and done immediately — about the rising cost of and the dwindling access to health insurance coverage. A mere 12 percent did not think reform was needed.

Only 52 percent of the 413 respondents in the Dan Jones and Associates poll, conducted Jan. 8-10 with a 5 percent margin of error, had confidence in whether legislators and governor can work out an effective reform plan. Additionally, 36 percent believe a reformation is actually going to make the health care system worse.

"Oh, it's broken all right," Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden, and co-chairman of the Legislature's Health and Human Services Appropriation Subcommittee said Wednesday. "So is the effort so far figuring out what to do." Christensen, a pediatric dentist, along with several other lawmakers are taking an "ask me tomorrow, I'll know more" response when asked what they believe should be done.

"The only thing I know is I don't want government telling doctors how to practice," he said. "Insurance companies are already doing plenty of that."

Fifty percent of poll respondents supported one of the specific proposals, which would require that all Utahns carry health insurance, just as they are currently required to have auto insurance.

House Majority Leader David Clark, R-Santa Clara, is planning to carry the sweeping reform bill this year. Although it is not ready for public review, he told fellow Republicans Wednesday that it is nearly complete.

At least three years, and as many as 10, will be needed to fully implement the six-step plan to transform health insurance in Utah to a consumer-driven "market" that will "contain costs, enhance access and improve quality," he said.

"This is not socialized medicine and does not change Uncle Sam into Dr. Sam, and there will be a lot more individual accountability," Clark said.

Whatever plan or combination of plans is passed — there seems to be enough support among legislators for reform that something will likely pass — everyone can expect to be a lot more responsible for their own well-being.

"People being responsible and being held responsible for their own personal health habits will definitely be part of it," said Pamela Atkinson, a former Intermountain Health Care Executive and a health policy advisor to Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr.