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State Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake City, lies down while volunteer Fred Gurney, 11, draws a crime scene chalk line around him at Washington Square on Tuesday. McCoy and others sought to dramatize the "crime" of inadequate health care in the state.
(Paul Fraughton/The Salt Lake Tribune )
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Salt Lake City's Washington Square looked more like the site of a brutal killing spree on Tuesday than the seat of city government.
Scarring the tree-lined grounds were chalk outlines of 132 bodies, each representing a Utahn who will die during the coming year because he or she does not have health insurance. The message: "America's health care crisis is a crime scene."
Organizers - political progressives, advocates for the poor, and Latinos - suggest different remedies. But Bill Tibbetts, an advocate at the Anti-Hunger Action Committee, said, "We all agree, there are too many
people dying. We need to start looking for solutions and stop putting our heads in the sand and hoping the problem will go away."
Utah's projected death toll was based on a 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, which estimated 18,000 uninsured Americans die each year due to lack of medical care.
The event coincided with demonstrations across the country staged by Americans for Health Care.
There were no picket signs, chanting or speech-making. Demonstrators answered questions from passersby, registered them to vote and handed out free lawn
signs and bumper stickers that say, "I am a healthcare voter."
Years of polling show most Americans agree health care should be universal. The idea has been gaining momentum since the 1990s, but there is little consensus on how to do it.
The Utah Medical Association (UMA) endorses the idea, but has yet to espouse a firm policy on how to get there.
For an organization representing 70 percent of Utah's 4,800 practicing physicians, universal health care "is like taking on the abortion issue," said UMA spokesman Mark Fotheringham. "There are people with passionate beliefs on both sides of the issue."
That goes for politicians too, even members of the same political party.
Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake City, and Pete Ashdown, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, both support better access to health care and posed for chalk drawings on Tuesday.
McCoy believes reform has to happen at the federal level.
"Otherwise you wind up with 50 different state plans" that aren't portable and carry different levels of coverage, said McCoy. "The states can't afford universal health care."
But Ashdown favors a non-government approach where states allow small businesses to pool together to purchase
health insurance from non-profit insurers.
For every person who is uninsured, there is another who is underinsured, added Tibbetts.
Conservative health department estimates put the state's total uninsured population at 292,800.
The U.S. Census reports a higher figure at 337,000, or 14 percent of the population.
"It's time to get off the dime. We're the only civilized, industrialized nation that does not have universal health coverage," said Archie Archuleta, representing Utah Coalition of La Raza.
Utah's Latinos are uninsured at disproportionately high rates.
kstewart@sltrib.com
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