Jon Huntsman, former Utah Governor, has lived on the fringe of the Republican presidential contender slate thus far but may be making inroads as the New Hampshire primary takes place in two days. Huntsman offers key difference on health reform that provide an edge to his campaign on tax and health insurance market reforms.
In addition, as he stated in the Sunday morning NBC Meet the Press debate, he offers a differnece on entitlement reform as he backs the Ryan plan on Medicare and entitlement reform. Huntsman favors means testing both Medicare and Social Security to mandate higher income persons pay more of their share for each.
Perhaps the biggest difference Huntsman offers relates to health related tax reform. His approach to health-related tax has profoundly positive implications for health care, because it eliminates our third health-care entitlement: the $300-billion-a-year tax-exemption for employer-sponsored health insurance. This provision has been in place since post-World War II when controls that incentivized employers to purchase insurance for their workers, were put in place tax-free, instead of giving that money to employees as salary and letting them buy insurance for themselves.
The employer tax exclusion is at the heart of our system and some contend that it causes overspending on extraneous health benefits and does not place price and value at the forefront as they shoulde be. In addition, the lack of health insurance portability that makes people afraid to leave, or lose, their jobs.
Huntsman's Utah Health Reform
Within three months of becoming Utah’s governor in 2005, Jon Huntsman Jr. set a goal of halving the state’s ranks of uninsured. In casting about for solutions, his advisers considered adopting the health fix that Mitt Romney had prescribed for Massachusetts.
Whether Huntsman wholly embraced the Romney plan and its now-controversial bottom line — a requirement that everyone buy health insurance — has been the focus of speculation leading up to both former governors’ candidacies for president. That individual mandate has been a thron in the side of the Newt Gingrich campaihgn for the presidency as well.
Governor Huntsman’s goal hasn’t been realized: The state’s uninsured rate remained steady at 11 percent in 2010, meaning 300,000 Utahns still go without coverage.
"Health system reform is complicated. It’s a process, not a destination," said former state health director and Huntsman appointee David Sundwall, noting that Utah’s innovations are "still maturing" and didn’t really take wing until 2009, the year that Huntsman left to become U.S. ambassador to China.
Sundwall and others say the former governor deserves credit for laying the groundwork for innovations that years from now may reap dividends.
Among them: state databanks to collect health care costs and outcomes, aimed at improving care. And Utah’s Health Insurance Exchange, a state-run marketplace where small business employees can shop for policies using contributions from their employer — giving workers greater choice and control over what they spend for coverage.
"We did analyze and live with the idea of a mandate throughout our period of discussions but ultimately … we rejected it," Huntsman said in a recent Salt Lake Tribune interview.
Initially plagued by high premiums, Utah’s exchange is seeing enrollment pick up, and prices are roughly equal to those outside, sometimes less, said Ernie Sweat, a local insurance broker.
Still, while the Massachusetts Connector has connected about 217,000 people to coverage — just 2 percent of its population was uninsured in 2010 — Utah’s exchange reached 3,583 enrollees as of July 1.
Massachusetts’ success is due, in large part, to the state embracing the individual mandate and subsidies, which Utah rejected. Another difference maker is that Massachusetts was able to keep premiums better in check through tougher insurance regulations than what Utah has been willing to undertake.
