Plan aims to help uninsured

Utah officials, health-care providers and others are lauding the goals of a diverse national coalition to reduce the ranks of uninsured Americans through tax breaks and an expansion of government programs. But they warn that the plan released Thursday by the Health Coverage Coalition for the Uninsured needs to be more specific if it's to succeed.

The coalition, meeting quietly for almost two years, includes doctors, retirees, business executives and others from groups as diverse as the AARP, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Families USA and the American Medical Association. The group, sometimes jokingly called "Strange Bedfellows," relied on experts in conflict resolution to resolve differences. And some groups dropped out along the way, including the AFL-CIO and the National Association of Manufacturers.

While the number of uninsured nationally is projected at 46.6 million, the coalition agreed that children need to be covered first, a concept with wide public support. The group also noted that children are less expensive to cover because they usually have fewer health problems.

"We're surprised that such a diverse group could agree on anything," said Mark Fotheringham, spokesman for the Utah Medical Association. "But if they are going to agree on something, protecting our children and making sure they have coverage is the one thing. How to do it is where the devil's going to come out in the details."

Coverage for uninsured children is not a new topic in Utah. In his "state of the state" address, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. recommended more than $4 million to add 14,000 more Utah children into the Children's Health Insurance Program, funded by state and federal matching dollars. The governor also spoke of the estimated 300,000 uninsured adult Utahns.

"There has been so much conflict and this is not an easy thing to resolve," said Allan Ainsworth, executive director of the Fourth Street Clinic, which provides care to homeless people in Salt Lake City, of the coalition's plan. "But the announcement's still short on specifics. This is incrementalism. Children certainly have to have health insurance to be healthy, but this is not getting to the lack of coverage for all people in the United States."