[Deborah Steelman] said, "The reforms would have broad impact right now, costing about $6 billion a year, including the state experiments, and providing coverage to three-fifths of the nation's 34.7 million uninsured. The state experiments will provide the necessary information for implementation of more comprehensive reform before the end of the decade."

Ron Pollack, the group's executive director, said the plan does not address cost controls in any meaningful way. U.S. health costs, at 13 percent of gross national product, are by far the highest in the world and the advisory council warned they could rise to 31.5 percent by 2020. Pollack said the recommended changes in small business health insurance plans would not ensure that all uninsured people are covered, since they would not mandate that employers cover their workers. He said he favors a government-run national health insurance system, or a plan requiring employers to insure their workers or pay a tax to help the government insure them.

In a minority report, the four members of a "liberal bloc" on the 13-member commission - including former Social Security commissioner Robert Ball, former secretary of labor John Dunlop, AFL-CIO health policy director Karen Ignani and John Sweeney, president of the Service Employees International Union - said the majority list of within-the-system reforms is "useful only as a shopping list" of "new furniture for a house that is on the verge of collapse."