Bennett: Utahns want good, not fast, health reform

Like a student reporting what he learned during summer vacation, Sen. Bob Bennett said Tuesday that Utahns told him during the August recess that they want health-care reform that is done right, not fast.

And Bennett, R-Utah, says that he and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., must be doing the right thing with an alternate plan they are pushing, because conservatives are attacking Bennett and liberals are attacking Wyden.

"We want to solve the problem," and are not swayed by those attacks, Bennett said at a press conference Wednesday at University Hospital, after a breakfast meeting with health-care administrators from around the state.

"I do believe, as I move around the state … that the vast majority of Utahns are less concerned with whether the solution is a Republican solution or a Democratic solution. … They are most concerned that there be a solution that works," he said.

Bennett and Wyden have been pushing their Healthy Americans Act instead of reform proposals touted by President Barack Obama and Democrats.

Bennett says his proposal would not increase costs. It would allow employees to take money employers provide for health care and buy any plan they like, which he says would increase competition and lower costs.

It would require all employers to contribute at least a minimum percentage of their payroll to health care. Those workers who could not afford basic quality health-insurance plans would receive a subsidy. It would make insurance portable. While it dictates a minimum level of coverage that must be provided, he says it would actually lead to less governmental control in the system than exists now.

But The Club for Growth, a national conservative group, launched a $90,000 TV ad campaign in Utah last month claiming Bennett's bill would lead to a compromise with Obama, and help lead to a government-controlled national health program.

Also, two Republicans running against him for the Senate — Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and businesswoman Cherilyn Eagar — have also similarly attacked Bennett's plan.

"Instead of Obamacare's one giant leap to socialized medicine, Bennettcare would have us take one small leap down the slippery slope of nationalized health insurance, littered with government mandates and subsidies," Shurtleff said last week.

Bennett said he believes all momentum for Democratic health-care reform in Washington has stopped because of protests and concerns expressed to members of Congress during the August recess — and because of growing popularity of his alternative.

"Some Democrats are now saying in their experience in their home states, being very much like mine, 'You know, maybe we ought to start over, maybe we ought to slow down,' " he said.

Bennett has said the only real political chance for the Bennett-Wyden bill is for the Democratic bills to fail. He has said his bill is not a step to compromise with them, but an alternate that could be considered if they fail.

e-mail: lee@desnews.com