Without providing much detail, she said Monday's announcement will be about the "building blocks" for reform, involving guiding principles and an insurance exchange with a lot of competition incorporated.

Gochnour, who is also vice president for policy and communications for the chamber, said keys include containing costs, sharing responsibility, supporting market-based solutions, endorsing wellness and disease prevention, and showing compassion. After Monday's announcement by the United Way, the public will be invited to provide input before a final proposal is put to Utah lawmakers.

"Our health system is far too expensive, at times has dubious outcomes, and leaves hundreds of thousands of Utahns without the peace of mind that comes from health insurance coverage," she said. "We can do better as a society."

Scott Anderson, chairman of the United Way of Salt Lake's board of directors, called it "an economic and humanitarian imperative" to address health-care issues. "This broken system is unsustainable and will ultimately threaten our economic competitiveness at the state level and our way of life as a community," he told the committee.

"If we do not take bold action now, we will find ourselves in what I describe as a financial doom cycle, where health-care insurance becomes less affordable for business and individuals, forcing more individuals and business to become uninsured, and then the cycle continues with a higher number of uninsured pushing up health-care insurance costs, making it increasingly unaffordable for individuals and business to obtain insurance."

He pegged the number of Utah uninsured at 360,000, including 90,000 children, 140,000 people between ages 19 and 34, and more than 100,000 being employees of small businesses.

Kelly Atkinson, executive director of the Utah Health Insurance Association, said his group still has lingering questions that need to be addressed to ensure that the connector concept will actually address the issues of insurance affordability and getting coverage for the currently uninsured. And Don Garlitz, representing the Utah Association of Health Underwriters, said Utah has "the healthiest health-care market" in the country and added that insurance premiums simply reflect the high cost of medical care from providers, including doctors.

Dunnigan also said he hopes reforms provide incentives for people to take more responsibility for their own health — citing specifically alcohol abuse, tobacco use and obesity as unhealthy behaviors — and allow businesses and employees to pay insurance premiums pretax.

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