>Mar. 23–If there are aspects of federal health reform that Utah’s insurance companies don’t like, they’re not complaining publicly.

Nor are they celebrating, or making predictions about what Sunday’s historic vote will mean for consumers.

“It’s too early to tell what it means,” said Daron Cowley, spokesman for one of Utah’s largest insurers, Intermountain Healthcare’s SelectHealth. “The bill is very complex. We’re still studying and analyzing it.”

Utah’s other industry giant, Regence BlueCross BlueShield, issued a statement Monday, welcoming the reform as a “much-needed” first step.

But “whether or not we are successful in remaking the health care system will be determined by our ability to harness the skyrocketing costs of medical care,” said Mike Tatko, the company’s spokesman.

Meanwhile, answers to the question on most people’s minds — “What will this do to my insurance premiums?” — remain elusive.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts premiums for employers will stay flat or even drop slightly. And working poor Americans who qualify for federal subsidies will see up to an 11 percent drop in premiums, the CBO reports.

People who are sick could benefit from new regulations on insurers that prohibit charging them more. Older people could still be charged more than younger people, though the bill places tighter limits on how much more.

But younger, healthy Utahns likely will shoulder premium hikes,

at least initially, said industry lobbyist Kelly Atkinson, executive director of the Utah Health Insurance Association.

The bill’s requirement that everyone buy medical coverage has the potential of providing insurers with millions of new customers, many of them young, healthy and cheap to insure. As a result, premiums are supposed to drop.

But long before the 2014 mandate kicks in, insurers will have to abide by a slew of other new rules, Atkinson said.

Within six months of its enactment, insurance companies no longer will be able to reject people with pre-existing conditions, or set lifetime caps on coverage. And by 2011, individual and small group market plans must spend 80 percent of their premium dollars on medical services, instead of on overhead.

Atkinson predicts premiums will eventually drop as more Utahns sign up for coverage. But much depends on how many small health insurers weather the new regulations.

Enforcement of the rules is also a wild card, Tatko said. “As it stands now, the penalty [for not purchasing coverage] isn’t very stiff.”

Tribune reporter Paul Beebe contributed to this report.

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