Bennett touts his health-care reform plan

The presidential candidates may still be stumping for their health-care reform plan, but a bipartisan health-care renovation they both want could already be in the wings.

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, chief sponsor along with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., of the Healthy Americans Act, was on a bit of a stump himself for his own reform plan Monday morning, explaining what's in it, what's not and what ought to be in the legislation.

"A key element is that it's bipartisan; it's got to be," Bennett told a group of business leaders who met for breakfast and health-care reform talk at Zions Bank. "None of my predictions so far in the campaign has come true, but I can safely say that the next president will be a senator. That means he will know deep in his bones the great truth Ron Wyden and I have embraced: The middle is a good place to start. I hope when the rhetoric clears post-election, the new president will see here's a bill with eight Republicans and eight Democrats co-sponsors that could very well be what he had in mind."

Both Bennett and Wyden are quick to note that the legislation is still a work in progress and, if nothing else, a frame for the post-election work that will lead to sustainable reform.

Wyden has been a health-care critic for 20 years, calling it "a sick-care system, not a health-care system" that is procedure-based and impossibly expensive because it is financially driven by quantity, not quality.

The recent general economic turmoil has pulled the ongoing health-care reform from the spotlight. "But if we don't make at least a start toward transformation, we'll be dealing with problems a lot more devastating than what we've just been through," Bennett said.

Americans spend $2 trillion a year on health care, a bottom line that the Wyden-Bennett bill proposes trimming by a third. Even in Utah, where health-care services are expensive but generally run about half to a third as much compared costs nationwide, if health care isn't contained, in less than 10 years, the amount the average working Utahn will pay for health care will equal his annual income.

The greatest element for cost-control is quality, Bennett said. "And right now, the system is skewed against quality. In far too many places, providers respond to what will be covered (by insurance), not what the patient needs. Many times, what the patient needs is cheaper and less profitable."

Although run-ups to the November election will keep things in a whirl, behind the rhetoric the atmosphere is changing, he said. "The willingness to address this and the atmosphere for doing are the most encouraging I've ever seen."

The bill contains controversial elements that will require the bipartisan input and will get a lot of attention after the election, Bennett said.