Political acrimony may have taken over the center ring of health-care reform debate the past month, but Utah's effort should keep plugging away regardless of how much of a circus the issue becomes in Washington this fall, several members of the state's special task force on health care reform said Wednesday.

Gathered for interim legislative meetings and to discuss reform efforts in light of recent reform events, task force members said doing what the state believes is right remains the best approach.

Although recent town meetings on reform around the country may have devolved into shouting matches and a speech last week by President Barack Obama may have amped up the discussion by promising reform by the end of the year, Utah needs to keep moving ahead with its founding purpose — to maintain and enhance health and health care for every Utahn, task force members agreed.

Utah is already well ahead of draft proposals wending their way through Congress. The reform effort in Utah, already two years under way, takes a free-market approach that keeps the private insurance intact but on notice that it needs to develop attractive and affordable plans for individuals. It also calls for elimination of pre-existing condition loopholes used by private insurers to carve people out of coverage.

Lawmakers have also passed legislation that initiates a health-care paradigm shift toward illness prevention over treatment and to generally give individuals more authority and more responsibility for maintaining their own health as much as possible.

"We have been boldly and aggressively going down this path and developing resolutions to problems unique to Utah," said task force co-chairman and House Speaker Rep. David Clark, R-Santa Clara, noting that he most recently reviewed reform issues faced by Nevada.

Like all the 22 states he has visited or closely investigated, "I would never want to swap our problems for theirs or any other state," he said.

Clark said he believes a federal fix, for all its good intentions, would get in the way of real progress states are making.

Although some medical industry insiders have "bitten the inside of their mouths over some the things we've done, I promise we won't forget to look in the rearview mirror as we go further down this road," Clark said.

The notion that states know best when it comes to reform was endorsed in a letter Gov. Gary Herbert sent Wednesday to Utah's congressional delegation and key members of Congress negotiating health-care reform.