Several Utah commerce and health leaders gathered Wednesday at a town hall meeting in Provo to tackle health care reform in Utah.

The Utah Health Policy Project presented a health reform draft to a small group of residents in an effort to create discussion on how to fix the current health care system in the state.

Uninsured rates in Utah have been rising, said Judi Hilman of UHPP, and the current system in place in the state is broken.

"There are way too many uninsured people," she said. "For the second year in a row, Utah has surpassed the national rate."

In Utah, Hilman said, more than 300,000 people are uninsured, or approximately 17 percent of the state's population. Of that amount, one-third are working and cannot afford insurance and another third qualify for Medicaid or CHIP but are not enrolled.

The final third, Hilman said, simply choose not to enroll in health insurance.

"Sometimes we call that group the 'young immortals,' " she said.

A big problem with health insurance is the rising costs, which can add up to a 13 percent increase each year. As the insurance becomes more expensive, businesses cannot afford to offer insurance to their employees, and the employees cannot afford to buy it on their own.

Hilman said some of the premium citizens pay each year for health insurance can be attributed to those who use the health care system but are not insured.

"Right now, if you're insured, roughly 17 percent of your premium is going to pay for the uninsured," she said.

The UHPP's draft of a reform bill is the result of research and is drawn from other states' efforts at reform, Hilman said. Approximately 17 other states are currently looking to change their health care systems.

Now is the time to make changes, said Bill Hulterstrom of the United Way of Utah County. Many factors favor reform, including a federalist government that supports states in making their own changes.

Utah also has the benefit of former Gov. Mike Leavitt, who is now Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"It's hard to imagine a time when the stars have been more aligned for this," Hulterstrom said.

The potential reform plan involved making an essential benefits package that is available to everyone. This package would have incentives for healthy living, like losing weight or entering a smoking cessation program.

The package also would include lower or higher co-payments based on the necessity of care. Four treatments included in the plan are preventative care, primary care, life care and comfort care.

The co-payment for preventative care would be lowest at $5 to $10. On the upper end of the scale, patients would pay 25 percent to 50 percent of the cost of comfort care, like shoulder surgery.

Primary care would include checkups for a co-payment of $15 to $25, while life care would include emergency care or cancer treatment, with a co-payment of $500 to $1,000.

"Basic insurance is something that has a continuum," said Natalie Gochnour of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. "As something becomes more elective, it becomes more expensive."

The basic idea of the plan is that health care plans will be geared toward the needs of the individual, Gochnour said. In order to be licensed to sell insurance in the state, she said, companies would need to offer the basic benefit package, though they could also sell more expensive plans of their own.

Health care reform will be discussed in the Utah State Legislature in January, and Hilman said public input is needed on the subject to decide what is best. It is important to come up with a new plan to provide insurance that all citizens can use and afford.

"You can't require everybody to get coverage if it's not affordable," she said.