Rick Rebel says the debate on health care reform, particularly on the national level, is far from over.

Rebel, of Western States Insurance Agency, spoke Wednesday at the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce’s monthly membership forum luncheon at the Linn County Fair & Expo Center, giving the group a glimpse of what the future of health care might be.

“It’s a collision between capitalism and socialism,” Rebel said. “The things we do today are going to have a huge impact on our grandchildren’s generation.”

He said that health care expenditures have grown 120 percent in the last 10 years, more than twice as much as the average wage increase. Pointing to a long list of reasons ranging from an aging population to new technology to lifestyle and an entitlement mentality, Rebel said assessing value of health care is truly the hard part of the problem.

“Right now 60 percent of the insurance market is in the employer market,”Rebel said. “Health care is the only thing we buy with somebody else’s checkbook and I don’t know how we got there.”

Rebel said many Oregonians are employed but uninsured and health care is simply out of reach for a lot of people. He said more than 600,000 people are currently unemployed in the state.

High costs and economic problems contribute to that, but Rebel also pointed out that there is a growing number of people who are uninsured by choice, most of them young.

He said current state legislation is designed to bring all health care plans under one umbrella. An issue he feels will need to be resolved is that of insurance mandates that could raise costs as much as 200 percent for younger age groups and reduce them as much as 40 percent for the older policy holders.

“If everyone pays the same we’ll see a lot of people in that younger age group simply dropping their policies,” Rebel said.

Nationally, Rebel says he saw the debate shift from health care reform to health insurance reform.

“The complexity of a health plan is very difficult and everyone has had a hard time making the message simple,” he said.

Ultimately Rebel says the differences between the bills in the Senate and the House will have to be resolved in both chambers.

“They start debate on Monday and it’s my guess they will take up to eight weeks to finish,” he said. “Cost is the big issue and none of the bills address it.”

Rebel said most of the rules being discussed will drive the cost of affordability higher.

“It will mean lots of new taxes,” he said. “It comes down to one question: Is health care a privilege or a right? Until we all agree on what it is we’ll be here awhile.”