We Have the Alternative

John T Neilsen, from corporate counsel for IHC and health policy advisor to Gov.s Huntsman and Herbert has published a letter in the Salt Lake Tribune (http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/54462067-82/utah-health-care-exchan...):

As an adviser on reforming Utah’s health care system, I spent four years working with both Govs. Jon Huntsman and Gary Herbert to develop a unique Utah solution to health care reform. So I am substantially disturbed to hear talk of dismantling Utah’s groundbreaking health insurance exchange.

Almost as frustrating is the constant chorus of Republican leaders who rail against "Obamacare" without offering any semblance of an alternative to reform the seriously broken American health care system. Oh, there is bold talk about keeping the Affordable Care Act’s insurance of companies rating people for pre-existing conditions, but no rational alternative to the act’s mandate that everyone buy insurance has been proposed.

The only reason the insurance industry went along with not considering pre-existing conditions was because the added financial risk was covered by the individual mandate.

As a Republican, I beg my party to give me some comfort that we have a plan that is better than the president’s, or that the Utah Legislature has something in mind to replace our nationally recognized Utah Health Exchange and other reform efforts besides only an ideological aversion to any feature that resembles what the Democrats have proposed or enacted.

John T. Nielsen

Cottonwood Heights

My comment:

The agitation for repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the Utah Health Exchange comes from an honest appraisal that neither of these policiy initiatives will actually reform our miserable health care system. Mr. Nielsen, who has been instrumental in organizing the Utah Health Exchange and assisting in the Utah response to the ACA, can not see the forest for the trees. The alternative is obvious. Check out the Utah Healthcare Initiative proposal on this website. Mr. Nielsen does not like our proposal, not because he thinks it won't work, but because he believes one must appease the health insurance industry. Health system reform begins with the elimination of the health insurance business model.

Dr. Joe Jarvis