After looking at details of President Clinton's health-care reform bill for a day, it hasn't changed the opinions of Utah's lawmakers much.
Rep. Karen Shepherd, D-Utah, is still the only totally solid supporter of the president - and even said she will become an original co-sponsor of the bill when it is formally introduced next week.The other Utah members still praise Clinton's goals, but say his plans have some serious flaws that should be fixed.
Even Shepherd said the bill will undergo many changes, but said she agrees with the president that "any plan passed by Congress must meet two key criteria: It must provide coverage for every American and it must control skyrocketing health-care costs."
Such talk by the president and his avid supporters concerns Rep. Bill Orton, D-Utah. He said the only way to ensure that everyone has coverage is to have the federal government pay for it (which he said is unlikely politically) or mandate that employers and workers pay for it (which is expensive).
Orton said he worries that on top of that, plans call for expanding coverage by providing mental health care, more prescription coverage and long-term care for the elderly. He said that would require capping other services or raising premiums.
"I do not support mandates," he said. "I and others are pushing to adopt the dozens of good ideas in the bill to hold down costs, but eliminate its mandates and price controls. We want to inject market forces to hold down costs."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he too likes the goals of holding down health-care costs, but worries about funding.
He told Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala at a hearing Thursday that the plan's projections on savings from reforms to finance the plan are not realistic.
Hatch said the plan for "$124 billion in Medicare savings translates to about $80 billion from hospitals. Of that, Utah hospitals would have to absorb $200 million. Utah's 1.6 million people just can't absorb that high amount."
Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said he worries Congress may try to push too fast on reforms that are vast. He said in a Senate floor speech, "It is more important to do it right than to do it now."
Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, said he feels the current system provides the best health care in the world, and he would rather fine-tune it than drastically rework it as proposed.
"It's not broken the way he says it is, but it needs massaging," he said. For example, he said insurance companies should offer employers more options on an employee-by-employee basis to cut costs by not forcing unnecessary coverage. "They have started that now because of the talk about reform."
Orton said Clinton has already had great success by simply raising the debate on health-care reform to the top of the national agenda.
"That alone has held down health-care costs in 1993," he said. "The rate of growth in health-care costs was cut in half this year for worry that something may happen politically. Sometimes that's all that is needed to make things start to happen."