Bennett plugs health-care bill
Rising costs trouble employers and employees alike
That "monster" is rising health-care costs, a trouble area for both employers and employees across the country.
"Of all of the issues that we face as Americans in business today, there is none that comes up more often or that has a broader sweep than the issue of health-care costs," the senator told about 400 people at the sixth annual Rural Business Conference, a two-day event he was co-hosting in Logan along with the Utah Rural Development Council.
Bennett and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., are sponsoring the Healthy Americans Act. Although the details are still being negotiated and the sponsors are seeking bipartisan support, the act will contain elements to give individuals more control of health-care coverage "and market forces will start to bring health-care costs down, health benefits up, healthy lifestyles increase, and we'll get this monster under control," Bennett said.
Utah has more than 300,000 people without health insurance, including nearly 100,000 children, he said. Nationwide, the figure is nearing 50 million people, up from about 35 million in 1987.
"So this distorts the whole market situation as people think they are paying less for it, but in fact the prices are skyrocketing," he said.
Oddly, the largest percentage of uninsured Utahns are healthy, young, working men, who account for 30 percent of Utah's total. Bennett said they are "convinced they are indestructible." Nineteen percent are Hispanic working poor, followed by high school dropouts and laid-off college graduates.
The Healthy Americans Act is designed to allow individuals, not their employers, to own health-care coverage and take it with them when they move to another job. Bennett said the biggest problem with today's health-care system is that it "locks people in to a particular employer," with people often staying at jobs they hate because they fear losing their health benefits.
The act calls for rewarding healthy behavior, reforming taxes and allowing market forces to work. It would allow everyone to afford and access coverage and would not allow for denial based on age, gender, industry or health status — an important consideration for people with pre-existing conditions moving to a new job, he noted.
In essence, he said, everyone has coverage now because even the uninsured cannot be turned away at hospitals if their injuries are an emergency. But their costs now are passed on through the premiums of the insured, a system he called "inefficient" and "unfair."
You can be the first to comment on this story.