This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
It wasn't lost on the Republican contingent attending the Washington County Lincoln Day breakfast last week that freshman Sen. Dan Liljenquist of Bountiful spent Friday night as a guest in the southern Utah home of former Gov. Mike Leavitt and the two reportedly had lengthy, intense conversations.
Neither would confirm the rumor their meeting triggered among Republicans at the breakfast — that they discussed a possible run by Liljenquist for the U.S. Senate nomination in 2012. But they did confirm that they had in-depth discussions about their shared passion — health care reform.
Liljenquist, only in his third year in the state Senate, is a rapidly rising star in the Legislature. What seems to set him apart from other more high profile Republicans who are mentioned as candidates for the biggest political prizes in the state is that he is a policy wonk. He is a numbers guy. And he even gets excited about it.
That tendency would naturally attract a politician like Leavitt who spent most of his nearly 11-year tenure as governor on numbers-crunching, high-tech solutions to Utah's budget problems and overcrowded schools.
He was less interested in guns and immigrants than he was in technological advances in education and innovative delivery models for health care. And he got booed for it at the 2000 Republican State Convention. That was a watershed year in the sense that it was the beginning of what later became known as the tea party movement aimed at sweeping away moderate policy makers in favor of extreme conservatism and wiping out liberal reforms of the past 50 years.
That wave rose to a crest in 2010. But is there now a sign that in Utah, at least, it is waning?
The Liljenquist/Leavitt meeting in St. George and the excitement it created suggests that it is.
Liljenquist is sponsoring a bill this year that would change the way Medicaid services lower-income people to a "managed care system estimated to save $770 million over seven years." Instead of just paying whatever bills are submitted by health care providers and hospitals for qualified Medicaid patients, Medicaid would allot those providers a defined amount for each patient and require them to give that patient quality care within that budget. In other words, the incentive would be shifted from quantity of exams and procedures to quality and efficiency.
Leavitt, who was President George W. Bush's secretary of Health and Human Services, now is a consultant for businesses and medical care providers, helping them prepare for the future changes in medical care that are inevitable.
Leavitt likens himself to a cross-pollinating bee, spreading the best ideas emerging from each state to the others.
Liljenquist, he says, has unique ideas that could make him a key player in that puzzle.
Liljenquist ushered through a bill last year that revolutionized the public pension plan in Utah. It has been hailed as saving Utah billions in future years because rather than the state making set retirement payments when employees retire, it contributes so much toward the employee's retirement, then leaves the responsibility for the plan's value in the hands of the employee and his or her investment advisers.
The bill was palatable enough to pass because it doesn't affect current employees, only those hired in the future. Liljenquist now is going around the country sharing his pension-plan ideas with other states wanting to duplicate the Utah model.
Even amid the headline-grabbing rhetoric of the tea party and other groups demanding state sovereignty, unlimited gun rights and the slashing of programs that help the poor and middle class, a true nerd who spends his free time crunching numbers and charting bar graphs seems to be gaining momentum.
Maybe there is hope that problems can be solved without having to identify someone or something to demonize.
E-mail Paul Rolly at prolly@sltrib.com. —