UNPLUG YOUR EARS, LEGISLATORS

by Paul Gibbs

At the Thursday, July 17 meeting of the Utah Health Reform Task Force, Sen. Mike Kennedy made multiple uses of a metaphor describing the federal government as a 6th grade schoolyard bully beating up on 4th grader Utah in negotiations. It's a snappy metaphor if not a very apt one. How many 6th grade bullies are trying to beat up on a 4th grader to make the child take care of its thousands of needy younger siblings? For the people people of Utah who overwhelmingly support Governor Herbert's Healthy Utah plan, petitioning our legislature has been like pleading with a petulant child who plugs its ears and screams "I can't hear you!" when it doesn't like what it's being told. But aspects of Thursday's meeting gave me increased hope. I'm not sure how much they actually heard us but I think that to some extent we unplugged their ears.

The biggest news to come out of the meeting was the revelation of just how wide the coverage gap is: according to new numbers coming from a thorough study by the University of Utah and presented by Dr. Norman J. Waitzman, the numbers are in the area of 77,000, a good 20,000 higher than the previous estimate of around 57,000 (it looks like I need to change the tagline on my posters).  This demonstrates even further how big a problem the coverage gap is. And while task force co-chairs Rep. Jim Dunnigan and Sen. Allen Christensen sited this afterwards as creating a bigger funding problem, I'm having trouble with logic behind that. In order to securely close the gap and (to comply with ACA regulations), Healthy Utah covers people up to 138% of the poverty level, well over 100,000 Utahns. So aren't we just finding out that an even higher percentage of the people we'll be helping desperately need it? And while some in the legislature have advocated dropping down to only cover 100% of the poverty level, ACA rules would mean we'd get less federal funding that way, and we'd have to pay 30% of the costs after 3 years instead of 10. I think what really concerns some of the legislators about these numbers is that they demonstrate just how real the problem is, and that no matter how many studies are done it's never going to come out saying that everybody who needs help is getting it.

Testimony from people in and effected by the coverage gap also damaged these sorts of claims  In addition to screening  7 minutes worth of my film Entitled to Life, the legislature heard from LDS Bishop David Heslington, who deals with a high number of his congregation in the gap, and told then that "the status quo is not humane". They also heard devestating testimony from Melanie Soules, a single mother of two who suffers from trigeminal neuralgia. Soules lost her job as a CEO (and therefore her insurance) because her condition rendered her unable to work.  Soules also described the severe limitations of the charity care she was able to receive, and further statements by representatives of the University of Utah Medical Center also described the strain on their charity system.

Throughout all of the testimony of those in the gap, I saw little of the cocky swagger that characterized the task force members in their May meeting (in the first hour we did see a great deal of political posturing  and taking shots at the ACA, but this subsided once our testimony began). While I freely admit I've been profoundly nervous about testifying to this comittee, most of them stayed silent when I spoke to them, and Dunnigan (who conducted the meeting) was very welcoming and gracious to me. In general the combative attitude I expected to see didn't materialize. Perhaps they simply realized how bad they'd look taking shots at sick people and religious leaders. Or maybe we're finally starting to get through. A statement by Dunnigan after the meeting gave me some hope: "We have this dueling dynamic of we need it done today to help people, also recognizing that this is an extremely large, long-term financial commitment." As much as this overemphasizes the financial commitment, it's the first real acknowledge I've heard from  one of the chairs that not only are there real people who would need this help, but they need it quickly. It may be a small victory, but it feels ike a victory to me.

Now we wait for them to move and we consider the post-meeting words of Bishop Helsington to the media: "I'm not saying to rush it through, but do it right and get to it. My background is in business, and if it took me two years to come to a solution I would be fired."