Is it a quote from: a) Alan Greenspan; b) your director of network support; or c) Dave Waibel, president of Dayton Trane, about the affordability of health care coverage for his employees?

Thanks to the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce and its first Healthcare Summit recently at the Schuster Performing Arts Center, Waibel's quote aptly describes how most of the attendees felt about the funding system for health care. The summit elevated the dialogue on the state of the funding system from individual board rooms to a regional stage. We hope it's the beginning of a regional effort to advocate for a change.

As if you don't know, health insurance premiums have gone through the roof. On a grand scale, they account for $1,200 of the cost of every General Motors Corp. car and a prime motivator behind Delphi Corp. seeking bankruptcy protection. On a small scale, they represent nearly 9 percent of commercial heating and cooling systems contractor Dayton Trane's total operating expenses, which are up from 4 percent five years ago, and an additional $6 per hour on a $19 per hour employee for Diamond Tool & Die.

The seemingly intractable price progression is holding back job growth and reducing our global competitiveness. Our labor rates on average include about 75 percent of the cost of health insurance. What's behind the price advances?

Certainly, technological advances have raised the cost of treating and diagnosing many illnesses. Increasing life expectancies and improving the quality of life costs more money. Health care is big business. Four of the top 25 companies measured by their market capitalizations are involved in the health care industry: Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Amgen and Genentech.

Next on our list is what some would call those greedy, paper-pushing insurance companies. UnitedHealthcare and Wellpoint, formerly Anthem Inc., are the 31st and 64th largest companies in the domestic stock marketplace. Premium revenue is up 20 percent or more, but so too, are expense claims. However, other operating expenses are up much less, leading to expanding operating margins and 20 percent plus gains in reported earnings.

Are we getting too accustomed to their exorbitant price increases? Is there too little competition? One would think the profit-robbing increases in premium costs would cause business consumers to push back on their providers, to shop price and reduce margins. On the contrary, consolidation in the industry has expanded margins without passing gains along to consumers.

What about the front-line health care providers, doctors and hospitals? Here we have a fragmented group of caregivers. Whereas they used to be price givers -- reimbursed on a cost plus margin system, and whereas some would say this system promoted cost advances, the consolidation and regulatory forces united to make them price takers. Lacking much competitive clout, they take the price the insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid will give them.

A problem the hospital providers have is that the price given does not cover all of their costs. Medicare and Medicaid don't pay for all costs either. The insurance companies will pay for the indirect overhead costs and have paid for some of the uninsured, but are balking at paying for anymore.

Of course, we all know insurance companies really haven't paid for any of it, we the insurance-buying public has paid for it through rising premiums.

The system is broken because the uninsured problem grows every time premiums rise too much -- more companies drop their plans or raise the shares employees must pay, who then drop their plans. At any one point in time, 17 percent of our population younger than the Medicare-eligible age 65 is uninsured and another 17 percent are covered by a government-sponsored program.

The system shouldn't be based on employers paying for coverage. It's not working, is anti-competitive and restrains job creation. An intelligent fix would have a profound impact on our economy and our stock market. The dialogue's begun; let's keep it going.

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