Those who can’t go without the care they need. As American citizens, we pay the world’s highest taxes for health care and then, on top of that, every Utahn spends on average $2,800 more out of pocket - if they can afford it. We found that $28 billion will be annually spent on health care in Utah, with at least two-thirds of that money coming from taxes. We commissioned a study of Utah health care expenditures through the Matheson Center for Health Care Studies at the University of Utah in 2022. Because of these rapidly rising costs, an estimated 429,000 Utahns were unable to get the health care they needed in 2018 - because they could not afford it.Ĭoncerned about these rising costs, a group of Utah doctors, activists, and business leaders convened in late 2021 and created a non-profit organization, Common Sense Health Care for Utah, which is dedicated to reforming the way health care business is done in our state. In August 2020, the Utah Foundation noted that during the decade from 2008 to 2018, health insurance premiums rose 40% and deductibles for health insurance rose 74%, together making Utahns’ out-of-pocket expenses the eighth highest in the United States.
