People have a sense that they're losing their grip here in the land between the shining seas, and health-care reform is just the surrogate for that desperation, former U.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt told a group of newspaper editorial writers meeting in Salt Lake City for a national conference.

The immediate issue might be health-care reform, but the bigger issue to many Americans — and many told their congressional representatives so in no uncertain terms this past month — is that they are slipping away from being the America that can take care of its business, from health-care costs to the economy itself.

The not now-not ever message officials got ran headlong into an "it's now or never" approach in Washington, Leavitt told the 63rd annual National Conference of Editorial Writers during a Friday lunch address. That clash of ideals has given many Americans a "sense of being the canary in the coal mine. They're saying, 'This just doesn't feel right to me.'"

"They've watched as taxpayers being told (Congress) is bailing out this and bailing out that. They can't tell you the economics of the issue, but they are intuitively uneasy about it."

Leavitt, who governed the reddest of the reddest conservative state in the country, and as he put it, "had my hands on the steering wheel of the biggest health-care system in the world," quickly added that he isn't demeaning the importance of reform nor denying that it's needed.

"This is the most important debate of our generation," he said, adding that many people worry, believe or are absolutely convinced what's being proposed ranks somewhere near the last thing this country needs.

He said everyone is in a heightened emotional state, given the faltering economy, as a new administration gets busy trying to do what they believe they were sent to Washington to do.

"And as political parties do, they will work hard to achieve that until they're stopped, either by the voters or by the opposing party," which he noted has little to brag about when it comes to health-care reform.

Leavitt's no rookie to reform efforts: He's from an insurance family; as governor he proposed his own retooling for Utah's system with the well-thought-out but poorly executed HealthPrint program.

He said he has a good feel for what it takes to change health care from Washington, noting his first assignment after being appointed HHS secretary by George Bush was to be the front man for Medicare Part D, "and have the change take effect for 40 million people on the same day."