Health-care task force girds its loins

Plans for a multiyear reformation of the way health care in Utah is gotten and given is officially on the drawing board starting Thursday when an 11-member legislative task force is to meet for the first time.

The task force will begin the design phase of rebuilding a health care system that will ultimately ensure all Utahns have access to basic health care — nearly 300,000 Utahns don't have insurance now.

Task force members must also develop some kind of cost-containment process or at least put a handle on the skyrocketing price of health care. At the current pace, the amount of money spent on health-care services in Utah will be equal to the combined annual income of Utahns by the year 2030.

Lawmakers on the special panel — both members of the panel and those who will eventually vote on its recommendations — as well as many care providers, patient advocates, business owners and insurance carriers hope the process unfolds less like a reconstruction project and more like a renaissance.

"In any case, by any assessment or however it comes together, it has to come together now," said John T. Nielsen, special health-care adviser to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

As it rolls out, all stakeholders, including consumers, advocates, the business community, providers, insurance companies, legislators and the governor's staff will be involved.

"If you're interested in how this is going to go and you're not at the table now, you better find a way to be," Nielsen said.

The task force will begin addressing 16 specific issues outlined in 16 bills approved earlier this year by legislators. The panel will likely appoint five or six work groups that will be assigned to develop strategies for each topic, including standards for exchanging medical records among providers, children's health insurance coverage and incentives to businesses to continue offering medical benefits — including the service companies such as restaurants that have balked at providing coverage or co-payments of insurance premiums for employees.

Top on the list of priorities is getting everyone into the insurance pool, i.e., the chronically healthy to the chronically ill. No one gets turned down, and the system must be accessible and affordable to everyone in the state.