Lawmakers hope for customer-centric Web site - Salt Lake Tribune

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Call it Travelocity.com for wellness coverage plans. At least, that's what the state's Health System Reform Undertaking Military Unit is envisioning - a user-friendly, one-stop shop that interruptions down benefits for consumers, including costs, reimbursement rates for common procedures, norm out-of-pocket disbursals and the name calling of the docs and infirmaries contracted with plans. Started in 1996, Travelocity.com revolutionized the traveling and touristry industry, giving consumers entree to elaborate information about traveling choices, said Jessye Norman Thurston, an analyst for the state's Office of Health Statistics. Its doctrine centered on empowering consumers. Now the state trusts to reduplicate that success in the Beehive State coverage market. Under a bill of exchange piece of statute law unveiled Thursday at the undertaking force's 2nd meeting, wellness coverage companies would be required to electronically submit this sort of benchmark information to the Insurance Department by July 1, 2009. The portal would be administered by the Governor's Office of Economic Development, or GOED, which will likely have got it up and ready to have information by the first of the year, said Toilet T. Nielsen, the governor's advisor on wellness attention reform. Required by H.B. 133, the online tool would assist better transparence - a needed for market-based health attention reform, Thurston said. Both Advertisement

legislators and advocators expressed enthusiasm for the concept, though inquiries were raised about the deductions of people buying their ain wellness coverage plans. "If we're really going to have got consumer choice, we're going to set the consumer in charge, which takes the company out of the loop," said Rep. Merlynn Newbold, R-South Jordan. "Are we not able then to negociate terms breaks? What's it going to make to the end cost of coverage policies if everyone is on their own?"
Rep. Saint David Clark, R-Santa Clara, undertaking military unit chairman, acknowledged more than work will have got to be done before any action is taken on the bill. "To me, it [the portal] is trying to elevate the quality of wellness attention for Utahns," he said. "I believe it's going to take a whole truckload of tools to do this work."
The undertaking force, which is working toward the ultimate end of increasing entree to wellness insurance, also considered bill of exchange statute law that would offer a penchant to contractors command on state-funded projects if they offer their employees wellness coverage benefits. Rep. Saint David Litvak, D-Salt Lake City, said such as a penchant could make an unlevel playing field for little businesses, which may not be able to afford wellness benefits for their employees. And, he pointed out, the statute law make no reference of subcontractors, who in some lawsuits do a significant amount of the work on a project. With unemployment so low, one eating house proprietor testified, most companies must offer wellness coverage to pull and reserve good workers. The free market, undisturbed, will eventually repair the job of the uninsured, he said. "We desire to make it through the market," said Sen. Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City, "but the marketplace as it bes is not doing it."
The Beehive State Department of Transportation System is preparing an analysis of how the costs of state-funded projects may be impacted by the legislation. The undertaking force, which will analyze 16 different action items, must develop a reform program by the end of November. lrosetta@sltrib.com