Reiterating his call to insurance companies last month for affordable policies, the governor said he wants to see streamlined plans that are within more people's reach.
It's one aspect of reform, said Rep. David Clark, R-Santa Clara, the task force's House chair, where little progress has been made. Insurance companies, he said, are afraid to offer bold initiatives.
"I've yet to hear, 'Yes, we can do this,' '' Clark said. The broker community in particular "has become the greatest impediment to health system reform in this state today."
Clark acknowledged that if the free market fails to successfully tackle the issue and more Utahns become uninsured, the state will have to consider mandating residents buy policies and limiting when companies can reject them - moves some already say are necessary.
Huntsman told an audience at the Utah Intergovernmental Roundtable's health system reform summit at the Hilton that part of the solution must include an online portal - the "travelocity" of health insurance - that will help consumers shop for plans.
Required by HB133, the Legislature's health system reform bill, the online portal should be ready to go by year's end. But it's meeting strong resistance.
"We need information, we need clarity - not turf protection," Huntsman said, alluding to insurance companies' reluctance to participate. "We need true reform, not nibbling around the edges."
But it will take political will and leadership to make that happen, said Rep. David Litvack, D-Salt Lake City, a member of the Legislature's Health System Reform Task Force.
"The task force ends in November," he said. "I don't think the Legislature has the will - I may be wrong - to continue this particular task force. But how do we maintain the momentum and move along this reform?"
Clark, at least, thinks the answer may lie with the electorate.
"My challenge to the citizens of the state of Utah is join with me and say, 'We've got to have substantive change,'" he said. "I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore and I hope the citizens of the state of Utah will join me in that same type of emotion as we try to move forward."
Huntsman said Utah has made significant strides this year toward health care reform though, moving the state's 287,000 uninsured a little closer toward getting coverage.
Thanks to legislation passed last session, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is now open for enrollment year-round, and in January, Utahns will receive a non-refundable tax credit to help them buy policies on their own.
A proposed Medicaid waiver may also free up public dollars next year to help Utahns to purchase private insurance, around the same time a clinical health information exchange - which will allow providers to share patient information- is scheduled to come online.
Going forward, the governor said, the state needs to strike up partnerships with schools and religious leaders to fill more empty slots in public health programs. Higher-education students - "the young immortals" - must have coverage, even if that comes in the form of lower-cost, catastrophic policies.
"I'm here to tell you now, if the insurance community can come up with an affordable policy - even if it's just on the catastrophic level - to begin this conversation, we will take that" to university leaders, he said.
