Equally astounding is the number of uninsured Americans. Even CATO's conservative figures place that number at about 47 million.

Dad no longer lives in Europe. He is retired in Arizona now. He also has Alzheimer's and is interacting almost daily with the health-care system. He is traveling a path already tamped with many footprints.

New estimates from the Alzheimer's Association show that one in eight baby boomers will end life like my Dad. When my generation gets there, in about 2025, the disease will cost Medicare about $38 billion, according to the Bloomberg News Service.

The Utah Legislature recently convened a task force to work in earnest on health-care reform. All three major presidential candidates spend a lot of time talking about it, too.

My hope is they will recognize, as the CATO report makes clear, that the trend even among countries with socialized medicine is to move toward more market-oriented plans.

My hope is that they remember the U.S. system, despite its flaws, leads the world in innovation and medical research.

My hope is that, while making the system competitive and more affordable, they also will insist on hospitals becoming more transparent, so that we can easily see which ones are safe and reliable.

I have more hope in Utah's task force than in Washington. My fear, however, is that the Legislature won't move quickly enough to stay ahead of the feds.

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Jay Evensen is editor of the Deseret Morning News editorial page. E-mail: even@desnews.com