By 2008 there is a real prospect that, according to one forecast, health costs will exceed the profits of Fortune 500 companies. By that time, there is the real possibility that we will have crossed the fifty-million-person threshold in terms of the uninsured. We’ve already seen, in the last five years, wages go up 15 percent, while health care premiums have gone up 73 percent. So, if trends continue, cost and access issues are going to be far greater than they’ve ever been before.

At some point, you reach a point when the American people say, How are you going to fix this? They’re going to demand that Congress and presidential candidates come up with solutions beyond what you’ve seen so far.

Now, there have been times when we’ve come close. Six times in the last century we tried to do this, and on a couple of occasions we actually came closer than most people realize. So, this, in my view, is not a question of “if.” It’s really a question of “when.”

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Almost 16 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] spent on health care, I think, is too much. How else could our money be spent to more effectively make our country better than it is today? Our other competitors around the world do a lot more with a lot less than we do, and they get better results. So, I don’t think we’re getting what we’re paying for today. We’re still ranked by the World Health Organization as thirty-seventh in the world with regard to overall health system performance. I would expect the American people to say, at some point, that’s unacceptable.

It’s also affecting our competitiveness. When an American company has to spend $8,200 per employee for health care, and they’re competing against a company in Canada that doesn’t have to directly spend on health care, that puts the American company at a distinct disadvantage.