Market-driven initiatives are crucial to controlling health care costs, but real reform won’t happen without heightened voter interest in the issue, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said here today.

“The intensity is not there yet,” he said.

Dr. Frist, the first practicing physician elected to the U.S. Senate since 1928, spoke at a Rotary Club of Chattanooga luncheon today, focusing on the future of health care in the U.S.

In a news conference before his speech, Dr. Frist said that he is thinking about a run for Tennessee governor when Gov. Phil Bredesen’s term expires in 2010.

“I have served the state of Tennessee, represented six million Tennesseans the last 12 years of my life, and the question is, ‘Are you going to consider that again in the future?’ And I am going to consider it,” Dr. Frist said. “We’ll look at it. and a decision will be made sometime after the first of the year.”

For complete details, see tomorrow’s Chattanooga Times Free Press.