The United Way of Salt Lake will unveil its approach to health-care reform Monday, but legislators said Wednesday they do not want any new system to be government-operated.

The United Way, the Governor's Office of Economic Development and the Salt Lake Chamber have been working with about 130 business, government and community leaders for several months on reform. It remains a work in progress — a proposal for the Legislature might be ready by November — but Jason Perry, executive director of GOED, told the Business and Labor Interim Committee that it will be "a private-sector approach that would be industry-driven" and "something meaningful."

John T. Nielsen, director of GOED's Health Insurance Exchange, said the idea of a "connector" or "exchange" to solve insurance woes could take up to two years to put into effect, with the formation of a private, not-for-profit corporation getting a logistical and financial jump-start from state government.

But that did not please Rep. Jim Dunnigan, R-Taylorsville.

"If we're putting in tax dollars to get it started and the governor is appointing the directors, it's starting to sound like a government entity," Dunnigan said. "I don't care if it's a nonprofit corporation, but using tax dollars, the governor appointing the people and requests for legislation to get it going, if it walks, talks and smells like a bureaucracy, it is a bureaucracy."

Nielsen said various proposals from across the country have been considered. "As a result of all of these studies and consultations, we have concluded that the exchange or connector concept, coupled with other fundamental reforms, offers to the state the very best prospect of comprehensive reform going forward, without resorting to some sort of government-sponsored health care."

He described the connector as a way to facilitate the buying and selling of insurance, giving people a one-stop shop to get the information they need to understand health-care alternatives. The connector would assemble comparisons for insurance coverage. And instead of having an employer-sponsored health plan, the connector would be designated as the health plan and employer and employee contributions would be pooled to pay the insurance plan.

While legislators wondered if the Utah exchange proposal would be similar to a system used in Massachusetts, Natalie Gochnour, co-chair of the Health Care Working Group of the United Way of Salt Lake's Financial Stability Council, said she would characterize it "as uniquely Utahn."