Alta High finance class is an eye-opener

As students in Alta High School's financial literacy class settled in behind the desks in the computer lab last week, they eyed the blank screens in front of them like weight trainers sizing up a bar with eight plates.

An hour of heavy lifting was ahead, right in the middle of what was feeling like a steeplechase course around the potential financial hazards waiting for them in the cold, cruel, it's-money-that-matters world out there.

Today's task: Write a letter to Utah's congressional delegation on how to reform the U.S. health-care system — a letter that would be hand-carried by teacher Kimberly Simpson Batey to the Washington, D.C., offices of those senators and congressmen.

No small chore for a group who had looked ahead to college as a turnstile to jobs and financial well-being in life only to see their opportunities contract in the past year. Not only will they have to stay afloat in the wake of a Great Recession, they also face shouldering the full financial weight of a government-imposed overhaul of the apparently cost-comatose U.S. health-care system now under way in Washington.

"I don't really know what to say," said junior Nathan Lamb, audibly sighing and without looking up from the short string of words on his screen. "I hadn't even thought about health care and what it's going to cost me until a couple weeks ago when we started talking about this. I know a lot of people can get sick or hurt and be financially ruined because of it, and I know I don't want to be one of them, but I have no idea what I can do about it, really."

"This has been kind of a stunning few weeks for them," said Batey, whose career in finance took a stunning turn away from being an operations manager with Smith-Barney toward the payoff she always knew was waiting for her teaching high school.

"Finding your way after high school is one of life's most daunting tasks," Batey said between one-on-one chats with her students. "Imagine how things would look to you if you were this age and things were so off-kilter with the economy."

Now add the health-care sector — a sixth of the whole economy — into the mix and the future can appear pretty fuzzy even to the most positive young and immortal — what the insurance risk adjusters call this generation.

These students are going to inherit the residual problems from what seem now to be economic solutions, she said. "I can't tell them what to do or what the future is going to be, but I can help them to think and wake up and realize all this is about their lives, not their parents' (lives)."