Lawmakers, executives discuss health care reform

In an effort to show they are part of the health-care crisis solution, not the problem, a contingent of medical insurance executives spent Wednesday in Salt Lake talking with a contingent of small business executives and state lawmakers.

Invoking the historic natural alliance of the insurance industry and business — the most common source of insurance coverage for Utahns and all Americans is workplace-endorsed medical plans — options for fixing the numerous gaps in health-care access, quality and affordability were on the lunch menu at the Salt Lake Chamber offices.

"Health-system reform is our top priority," Lane Beattie, president and CEO of the chamber said after the meeting. "By employing private market principles and expanding accountability at all levels of the health system we can contain costs and improve quality of life."

Business owners nationwide share Beattie's attitude, which the past year has taken on a sense of urgency as startling numbers of companies have stopped offering medical benefits to workers because they can no longer afford to pay the insurance premiums.

Utah leads the nation in the percentage of businesses who have stopped offering plans. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the California-based health-care research, policy and practice nonprofit, shows that the number of Utah businesses offering health-insurance plans to workers has dropped by 10 percent the past eight years — to 60 percent from 70 percent in 2000.

Business representatives said premiums are eating them alive. In 2006, the employer-paid portion of health insurance for a Utah family was $10,975 — twice the rate of household income increases that year, twice the rate of inflation and double the cost of premiums paid by businesses in 2000.

Even though 90 percent of companies here with 50 or more employees still provide coverage, only 32 percent of firms with fewer than 50 employees are providing insurance plans for employees.

"Just a few of the numbers swirling around the health-care issue show pretty clearly that something needs to be done now," Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, said in a meeting Wednesday with the Deseret News editorial board. "Affordable coverage for small businesses must be at the center of health-care reform," she said, noting that she had promised both business and elected leaders earlier in the day that she would follow up next week with concrete options for "workable health-care reform."