IHC dodges 3% tax

Hunting season on Intermountain Health Care is over — at least for two years.

A proposed tax on the health-care and medical insurance provider has been dropped, and a task force will take on an exhaustive review of IHC operations.

A memorandum of understanding was reached Thursday by IHC officials and legislative leadership. The 3 percent gross receipts tax against the health-care organization in SB61 is now gone, replaced with the assurance of IHC's "full cooperation" with a task force that will study, among other things:

• Market penetration, geographic distribution and contracting arrangements in the health insurance and health-care markets of the state.

• The adequacy and application of antitrust provisions to health-care organizations and the tax exempt status of IHC.

• Business and financial practices of health-care organizations and how they impede or enhance a fair or competitive marketplace.

Sen. Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville and sponsor of SB61, said he's aware many of the people who complained to him about IHC's dominance in the marketplace may be disappointed.

"The concerns are still there," he said, but he is putting his faith in the findings of the task force, which include the services of an expert who will assess how health care is delivered in Utah.

"This has been a lot of pressure and a lot of community concern, patient concern, business community concern." Now, he said, "after we get this all put together, we're going where I wanted to go when we started. We're going to find out what people are concerned about in the community, we're going to find out what IHC's efforts have been."

Under the agreement, announced by Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy, and IHC officials, the health-care organization will hand over its business records, including contracts, cost information, billing practices, debt-collection practices and charitable service practices.

Valentine conceded that the agreement is not legally binding but added, "it is enforceable in the court of public opinion."

Waddoups said he believed the threat of a tax was a way to get "strangers" to the negotiating table over complaints brought by consumers and other providers, such as hospitals, doctors and others in the health-care field who feel squeezed out by IHC's practices.

IHC President Bill Nelson said the organization welcomes the scrutiny, in part because it will be "data-based," not derived from anecdotal information that is hard to refute.