Health of a Nation Entrepreneurs are sick of sky-high health insurance premiums, and the government is scrambling for reform. But can Uncle Sam save the deteriorating state of health care?

Like The Who's Pete Townshend, Alex Mann, CEO of Clicktime.com, a San Francisco applications services provider that makes products to track time sheets and expenses, could not imagine he'd ever get old.

"It's common in the high-tech business--companies never [think] about employees aging, or making any trade-offs of benefits when employees have spouses and kids," says 36-year-old Mann, who founded his company in 1995. When Mann started Clicktime.com, "we hoped to offer a corporate package in which employees wouldn't have to contribute at all to insurance premiums."

But as costs rose--10 to 15 percent per year over the past six years--and young IT employees started getting married and having children, Mann found health care was swallowing his firm's profits, even though he has just seven employees. "We ask employees to come up with higher deductibles, we shop health insurers, but still, this year we're going to have to look at the issue of coverage again," says Mann.