Webb: Health-care costs are increasing at unsustainable rates. More and more Utah employers are entirely dropping employee health insurance. More than 300,000 Utahns have no health insurance at all. The cost of employee health insurance has emerged as the No. 1 worry of Utah business leaders.

The director of the Congressional Budget Office says the rising cost of health care, reflected in huge Medicaid and Medicare expenses, threatens to swamp the federal budget and is a far scarier problem than Social Security and other entitlement programs. I'm personally aware of a number of young families whose chief breadwinners work for a small companies that don't provide health insurance. For them, this isn't just a theoretical problem. It's a crisis.

Clearly, our state and our country have a big problem and, thankfully, policymakers are focusing on it. Health-system reform is quickly emerging as the top issue for 2008.

No perfect prescription exists for comprehensive reform. It will be a long and difficult task requiring many compromises and the cooperation of many stakeholder groups. No one will be totally happy.

But it can be done, especially here in Utah. We have a young, healthy population, a strong economy, a culture of cooperation and collaboration, and current health-care costs that are far more reasonable than in most states. We also have a very supportive federal administration, especially Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, willing to grant waivers and flexibility in federal/state programs. We have "best practices" from other states and countries, plus the best recommendations of top think tanks and national experts.

Two of the Legislature's top leaders, House Majority Leader David Clark and Senate Assistant Majority Whip Sheldon Killpack, are leading the charge, supported by able legislative staff. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., his top policy advisers and experts in the Department of Health are fully engaged with lawmakers. In addition, the state's top business leaders and nonprofit organizations have been studying reform proposals for several months. (I have provided consulting work for that coalition, including the Salt Lake Chamber.)

Most importantly, the key stakeholder groups, including consumers, doctors, hospitals and insurance companies, brokers and agents, and many others, have agreed to work cooperatively to find solutions. They obviously don't agree on every matter but are at the table in good faith.

Clark and Killpack, along with the governor's office, have already outlined a framework for consideration in the 2008 session. It takes a fiscally conservative approach to health-system reform, relies on the private market, encourages personal responsibility and provides consumer information and choice. It's a promising start to a lengthy and tough challenge.