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I’m ready to start focusing on the issue of health care for Utah citizens. The legislature created a task force to study it. The Deseret News addressed the issue in an editorial today. I would like to know who is on the task force. So far I know the following:
- David Clark
- Sheldon Killpack
- Merlynn Newbold
- Plus non-voting “special masters” Wayne Niederhauser and James Dunnigan
All of those listed above are Republicans. According to the bill, at least one senator and two representatives on the committee must be Democrats (unless we have any independent or 3rd party elected officials that I don’t know of).
Citizens are already likely to be shortchanged by the task force when, as Bob Huefner notes from reviewing the bill, “The burden is being put on the patients and the enrollees and the insurance protection is being given to the industry.” That does not bode well. I will be looking at the bill myself and see what else I can glean from it’s text in the next few days.
3 replies on “Health Care Task Force”
“Citizens are already likely to be shortchanged by the task force ….” You could have stopped that sentence right there and still have been completely accurate.
I could have, but I think it’s important sometimes to bury our cynicism and point out the ways that the shortchanging of citizens has been explicitly written into the legislation.
Also, knowing that it has already been written to be detrimental to individuals, we need to start speaking early and loud on the issue to make sure that the damage is kept to a minimum. If we don’t, I foresee the result as being a mandate that anyone meeting certain income requirements be required to purchase state approved insurance, which will look like a standard 20% coinsurance with a $25 copay plan – possibly with required prescription coverage as well – and those with lower income will receive these same “basic” policies with premiums being paid by the government (meaning their fellow citizens) in full or in part. The end result would be that all Utahns are theoretically insured but without addressing any impact on the issue of actual health care.
Good points, of course.