No attempt to address the climbing cost of education, or of anything else, will be valid unless it also faces the skyrocketing cost of health insurance. State leaders can no longer entrust us to the tender mercies of the modern health care marketplace, but must take some control of the situation.

Health care costs will always be of special concern to government, as workers from teachers to prison guards work in high-stress, sometimes downright risky, professions.

Because of soaring costs suffered by the state's largest school district, which operates a self-insurance pool for 3,700 teachers and nearly as many support personnel, the hike in many Jordan employees' insurance premiums has been a shocker. Many premiums have more than doubled, more than offsetting teachers' overall 5.6 percent pay raise.

Teachers agreed to those higher rates if the raises came with it. It made sense for those approaching the end of their careers, as retirement pay is based on pre-retirement salary. But it was also a whack up-side the head to lower-paid teachers with young families.

At a time when Utah needs more teachers, and has a hard time keeping the ones we have, higher insurance costs drive the good ones to other professions or other states.

Lawmakers who don't want to raise taxes for education - and especially those who want to lower them - complain about the share of education funding that goes to administration and overhead. Well, the Jordan School District's budget for health, life and long-term disability insurance, the bulk of which is the health plan, is $58 million. (Of that, $16.5 million is covered by employee-paid premiums.)

An aggressive state plan to cut those costs by even a small percentage - by, say, beefing up large cost-sharing pools for public and private employers, or jawboning down the price of prescription drugs - could save millions that could be used for education and other needs.

Without such efforts, government will never get its spending under control.