It is understandable that in an election year, 104 legislators could not be expected in 45 days to climb the steep learning curve required for votes on a comprehensive plan. But task forces are often places where good ideas go to die, and if the Legislature adopts a multiyear horizon to launch reform, the insurance companies and providers will pick reform apart and kill it.

So we call on Gov. Jon Huntsman and the Legislature today to set the 2009 session as the deadline for adopting comprehensive reform.

The United Way put forward its plan in part because the Bush administration had opened a window for experimentation by the states. If the Legislature delays, that window will close.

The United Way proposal is not, after all, a leftist cabal for socialized medicine. It's a market approach based on individual responsibility that grew out of research and recommendations from the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce and was vetted by 130 business and community leaders. It recognizes that the failures of the status quo - a growing population of the uninsured, rapidly escalating costs, misaligned incentives and cost shifting - cannot be solved in isolation.

Among its innovations would be the creation of a Utah Health Insurance Exchange, a nonprofit corporation that would function like a stock exchange for insurance. It also would facilitate the purchase of insurance with maximum pre-tax dollars, create portability and promote transparency.

A Health Benefits Commission would define an Essential Benefits Package, which would offer a range of services that would become more expensive to the insured as the treatment becomes more elective. Insurers would have to offer the basic plan, but people could buy more comprehensive coverage if they chose.

Employers and workers would continue to share costs, but employers who do not provide at least the Essential Benefits Package or its equivalent could be charged a premium. Public funds would subsidize coverage for individuals based on need.

The prognosis is simple. When the patient is dying, Band-Aids won't save him. It's time for major surgery.