Health Reform Emerging from Cloud

Oct 14, 2008 by Elizabeth Ziegler

But Legislature Still Has Much To Do

(KCPW News) There's no silver bullet, no miracle pill that will overhaul Utah's ailing health care system, stakeholders told lawmakers yesterday, during the latest Health System Reform Task Force meeting. The ailing system is so complex that after a summer of study, specific solutions are only now visible, says Rep. David Clark, the House chairman of the task force.

"I think in the IT world they call it a cloud. Where it's kind of where they throw everything in and you're able to pull things out. I think through a part of this year, we've all been in that cloud. That's all been in there circulating and we're all trying to find that appropriate amount, the direction that we [take]," Clark says.

While a direction is materializing, there's still a very long list of issues that need to be addressed, from a review of state and federal laws to tort reform and agreeing on a basic insurance plan for everyone in the state. And it looks as if the stakeholders want a comprehensive bill to address all the issues at once.

When asked to prioritize the items on his reform wish list, Dr. Mark Bair says implementing the proposals separately won't work. The chairman of the physician advisory workgroup and president of the Utah Medical Association says the state's health system must be treated like an ailing patient.

"If I just save their kidneys without addressing their liver, their heart and their brain, it is a disservice to the patient as a whole. And so to be honest with you, ranking that becomes very difficult to do. In other words, they're all interconnected. And so if we don't take a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach, we lose the patient," Bair says.

Health reform will likely take several years to accomplish, though a bill is expected to emerge from the process by the end of the interim session. Click here to listen to yesterday's health reform meeting.

Email to a friendPosted in KCPW Newsroom. Copyright 2009 KCPW