·         "We all must make choices that may be difficult and unpleasant today to avoid passing an even greater burden on to future generations. Let us not be the generation who sent the bill for its consumption to its children and grandchildren."

·         "[M]andatory [federal] spending has grown from 27 percent before the creation of Medicare and Medicaid to 42 percent in 1985 to 54 percent last year."

Walker also highlighted some options for reform to help moderate spending, such as developing national standards of health care and using the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) as means for delivering health-plan options.  But moving Medicare beneficiaries from the traditional fee-for-service program to the managed-care insurance programs offered under the FEHBP could reduce seniors' freedom of choice. 

Additionally, Walker noted that tax breaks for employer-sponsored health care amounted to $118.4 billion in 2005, compared to $62.2 billion in tax breaks for mortgage-interest deductions that same year. Thus he didn't seem to think it was a good idea to increase tax breaks for health savings accounts or consumer-directed health plans.

Yet, given that rising health-care costs are contributing to our nation's fiscal challenges, it's clear that serious cost-benefit decisions will be made in the coming years.  An important question for Americans to consider is, in a free nation who should be making health-plan coverage decisions: employers, government, or individuals?

If we as a nation revere liberty and want individuals to be free to make their own health-coverage decisions, perhaps one of the first steps we should take is to repeal the tax breaks given to employers for purchasing employees? health insurance and instead offer those tax breaks to individuals.  That way citizens could be free to purchase the insurance of their choice and gain true insurance portability when changing jobs.