Dr. Rocky White considers himself an unlikely proponent of universal health care. A physician from Colorado's rural San Luis Valley, White says he is a longtime conservative Republican who normally shies away from big government spending programs.

But after 12 years practicing in rural medicine, White has seen a system that is broken and in dire need of a fix.

White was in Helena last week to speak to Helenans about the issue and to testify on behalf of Senate Bill 498, sponsored by Christine Kaufmann, D-Helena, which would establish a group to design a universal health care system for Montana.

The Senate Health, Welfare and Safety Committee passed the bill 6-3 Saturday, and sent it on to the full Senate.

In 2006, Colorado passed a similar bill, creating the Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform.

White hopes other states in the Rocky Mountain West also act on the issue.

White has seen patients who wait too long to see a doctor because they have no insurance, turning a small problem into a big, much more expensive one. He's seen doctors treat patients differently based on their coverage, ordering expensive, unnecessary tests for patients with good coverage and skimping on the uninsured or underinsured.

He's seen people with no insurance with major health problems that must be treated - the cost of which ultimately gets paid by higher bills to people with insurance.

"Those are the sorts of things that are driving up insurance premiums, and those are the things that have to change," said White, medical director for cardio-pulmonary services at the San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center in Alamosa, Colo.

White said that though many people oppose the type of government spending - and consequent taxes - necessary for state-run health care, most would benefit greatly from such a system.

He asserts that 30 percent of the money being spent on health care is wasted due to the various flaws in the system, resulting in a tax that is ultimately passed on down to everyone.

"It took a lot to push me off the edge," White said. "We're reaching a tipping point in our society. This whole thing is falling to pieces."

White said he's come to realize the federal government isn't going to do anything soon on the subject, so it's up to states to fix the problem.

"(Colorado's) governor realized we're going to have to take the bull by the horns," he said.

What is being proposed in Colorado is a system based on the principles of the Federal Reserve.

To prevent the system from being treated like a political football - which he says Medicare and Medicaid have become in the federal government - a trust would be created separate from the general fund.

Under the plan, everyone would be included in the same risk pool, instead of the variety of plans with different deductibles and varying degrees of coverage offered by insurance companies.

"Everyone's going to get sick eventually," White said. "Something is going to happen to us all at some point. Are we going to make this a healthy country or continue on the path where it's every man for himself?"

White said that it's a fallacy that Medicare and Medicaid are less efficient than private insurance.

He said his office did a study and found that most of the time spent dealing with bureaucracy was with insurance companies.

To pay for the plan, White proposes putting current state Medicare and Medicaid money into the fund, along with cigarette taxes, alcohol taxes and other "sin taxes," having an employer contribution of 3-4 percent and an income tax of about 6 percent.

"You're already being taxed, whether you know it or not," White said.

In the fall of 2005, Rep. Mark Larson wanted to bring a single-payer health care bill before the state legislature.

Senate Bill 208 put together a Blue Ribbon Health Care Coalition to look at the issue.

The Colorado Medical Society took a vote, and 91 percent of its members were in favor of the state looking at universal health care.

The doctors put together a Health Care Reform Congress, which has been meeting since last spring, to come up with points they all could agree on.

They came up with some very simple principles - such as equal access to care for everyone, that doctors are treated fairly, that patients are treated fairly - then began work on what needed to be done to meet those principles.

"We have purposely steered away from the question of how to pay for it," White said, adding that is a question for the legislature to decide.