Most Utahns oppose federal health role

As far as a majority of Utahns in a new opinion poll are concerned, the federal government's role in health-care reform is pretty much to get out of the way.

Well over half (56 percent) of those surveyed in a KSL/Deseret News survey conducted earlier this month by Dan Jones & Associates oppose national health-insurance legislation "because," as the question stated, "government should have no real role in heath-insurance coverage."

Just more than 33 percent said they favor a national health-insurance reform bill "where the government has a role in insurance coverage."

Regarding health system reform in general, 57 percent of those polled said they definitely (44 percent) or probably (13 percent) oppose Congress passing a national health-care reform bill.

More than a third said they favor a national health-care reform bill. That group's responses were split evenly at 18 percent "definitely" and 18 percent "probably" favor. The poll of 402 Utahns conducted Aug. 3-5 has a plus or minus 5 percent error margin.

The results come as public discussions, reform conferences and a round of town hall meetings scheduled by federal officials on summer break have fallen apart, with both sides resorting to name-calling and accusations for outright fear-mongering. On Thursday, people flooded members of Congress with so many e-mails that they overloaded the House's primary Web site. The spike in volume was widely believed to be a result of the health-care debate.

For the federal government to not have a role in reform isn't an option, given that Medicare, the health-care plan for seniors, and Medicaid, the insurance plan for poor, disabled and some senior Americans, are federal and state government insurance plans.

"There is a role for the federal government," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told the Deseret News editorial board Thursday.

Problems abound, but they're all different state to state, he said. What works in one state won't work in another because every person and every state has the same yet unique set of health-care problems exclusive to it, Hatch said.

"But how health care works, why it's broken and how it gets fixed are unique in each state," he said. "So it only makes sense that states would be much better at solving their particular versions of those problems."

Reasons the federal government shouldn't insist on or inflict major changes is because doing so, at least under the proposed House bill, would increase income taxes on people earning more than $350,000 a year and could well depend on borrowing from Medicare to make up the difference the tax increase won't cover, Hatch said.

When people hear that Washington is trying to dictate reform and make sweeping changes in a hurry, "people are scared, and they have reason to be."

e-mail: jthalman@desnews.com