A tough battle turned into a rout Tuesday, though the war is far from won for Utah's amputees.
A bill that would force insurers to provide more favorable plans for the 13,500 Utahns with prosthetic limbs passed the House Business and Labor Committee 9-3, despite being put there initially because it was thought it couldn't pass.
Private insurance plans don't cover nearly as much of a prosthetic limb's cost as Medicare does.
"Right now the disparity is too large to lift on your own," Kay Sweeten, of Nibley, said after the vote. Her 10-year-old daughter Elizabeth was born with no ankle and only two toes on a leg 30 percent shorter than the other.
Currently, the cost of Elizabeth's prosthetic is borne by the Shriners Hospital for Children. But once she's 18, she'll have to find her way in the private market.
What that market is willing to do was a point of much debate Tuesday.
"Mandates drive costs up on the backs of the small employers in the state," said Steve Hunter of Utah Health Plans, which represents a large number of the state's insurers.
House Bill 66 -- now in its third year -- would require a plan similar to what Medicare offers, and studies show that making such changes would add 60 cents per year onto insurance premiums, said sponsor Rep. David Litvack, D-Salt Lake City.
Hunter argued that private plans are already changing in many cases to make limbs more affordable. Rep. Jim Dunnigan, R-Taylorsville, said tying the state in one more way to the federal government would make it that much more difficult to enact reform at a local level.
The bill was put into the committee personally by Speaker of the House Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, who is trying to enact that local reform and opposes the bill.
"Unlike Washington, Utah doesn't want mandates because we believe, I believe, in the marketplace," he said earlier in the day.
None of that was enough for the majority of the committee.
"This is a small voice that needs to be heard," Rep. Steve Clark, R-Provo, said shortly before the bill was passed to the floor of the House.
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