The pandemic of health care running amok is well under way, Leavitt said, noting some of the startling numbers involved:

• Health care amounts to 17 percent of America's economy.

• Absent fast and fundamental reforms, over the next two decades the average American household's health-care spending, including the portion of its taxes that pays for Medicare and Medicaid, will go from 23 percent to 41 percent of average household income.

• Add recent economic trauma to the mix, and today's recession could easily bring the projected exhaustion of the Medicare Part A trust fund in 2016, not 2019.

• About 23 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have lived long enough to have five or more chronic conditions. Many of those conditions could be prevented or managed by better decisions about eating, exercising and smoking.

Nearly 30 percent of Medicare spending pays for care in the final year of a patient's life.

Medical care has gotten much more competent, much more specialized and much more expensive. In his introduction to the health-care summit, Leavitt said, "Medicare's big three hospital procedure expenses today are hip and knee replacements and cardiovascular operations with stents, which were not on medicine's menu in 1965."

Advances in medical technology and research along with increased interest in personal fitness have created a surge in the longevity of Americans, which in effect is compounding the difficulty of finding a solution, Leavitt said.

Leavitt will continue in the post he's held since Jan. 26, 2005, for a couple more weeks. But before he goes, he plans to leave on the desk a note of sorts to his replacement, Tom Daschle.

One aspect the former governor plans to emphasize is giving consumers the price and outcome data for common medical procedures so they can make comparisons. He said it must be an "explicit goal of health-care reform" because it will improve accountability and discipline in the system.

Barack Obama has promised to make affordable health coverage available to everyone and wants to prohibit insurers from turning anyone down for chronic conditions. Leavitt advises that serious reductions in waste, reducing excessive use of drugs and putting medical records on line ASAP are vital to getting medical costs to level off.

"Every American needs health insurance," Leavitt said. "It will be a hollow victory if we have insurance available to everyone that no one can afford."

The other big health-care problem in the offing is Medicaid, Leavitt said, which in the next 50 years could become a bigger economic threat than Medicare.