An unhealthy trend

Utah is experiencing a very unhealthy trend: The Beehive State has the highest rate nationwide of employers dropping medical insurance plans for employees. According to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, the loss of these benefits has resulted in 43,000 Utah children over six years losing health benefits offered through their parents' place of work.

Sadly, these are trends with no end in sight. Health-care costs are escalating out of control, and as the rolls of the uninsured swell, their health-care costs are shouldered by employers who offer health insurance as an employee benefit and individuals who pay health insurance premiums.

The system is, indeed, broken.

The $64,000 question is how to fix it.

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have proposed legislation that would uncouple health insurance from employer control and boost overall access to health-care coverage. The Healthy Americans Act focuses on portability, rewards for healthy behaviors and access with a range of choices and costs in private sector insurance companies. There are many aspects of this plan that promote free-market principles, healthier lifestyles and most importantly, ensure that the largest number of people possible have health-care coverage.

For all of the legislation's merit, Congress has refused to address health-care reform since then-first lady Hillary Clinton's attempts to start the debate in the 1990s. Over the succeeding decade, the issue has become increasingly problematic between the growing numbers of Americans who have no medical insurance and runaway health-care costs.

The findings of the Economic Policy Institute and the Utah Department of Health's 2006 Health Status Survey, which found that nearly 90,000 Utah children had no health-care coverage, are cause for alarm. Utah's experience is hardly unique.

Somehow, the sharply divided Congress has to begin work in earnest on pressing issues of the day, including health-care reform, Social Security reform and immigration. Sens. Bennett and Wyden have presented a bi-partisan blueprint from which to start the health-care discussion. The hundreds of thousands of people in the United States who do not have health-care coverage — among them an astonishing number of children — need such solutions.