Aetna Inc. <AET.N>, Safeway Inc. <SWY.N> and 35 other U.S. companies facing soaring health-care costs released a plan on Monday to lobby Congress for a market-based approach for providing universal health-care coverage. 
They also said individuals must take more preventative steps to avoid expensive health crises down the road as Congress looks for ways to expand coverage to the 46 million uninsured Americans. 

"We believe there's a real sense of urgency in solving this problem and we intend to be active participants in this debate," Safeway Chief Executive Officer Steve Burd told reporters. "We do not have a monopoly on good ideas." 

The group said the system for providing coverage was broken and that next year the average Fortune 500 company will have a health-care bill that exceeds its net income. Health-care costs were 16.2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product in 2005. 

The health-care system "responds to treatment after people get sick and does little to identify and prevent illness," Neil Golub, head of Price Chopper Supermarkets, said in a statement. "It's time we build a health-care system that focuses on keeping people in good health." 

The executives also urged that low-income Americans be given help to pay for health coverage rather than have services provided for free as a way to encourage them to seek regular access instead of waiting until emergencies arise. 

The group, called the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform, also wants tax breaks to be given to individuals who pay for their own health-care costs, as businesses are now. President George W. Bush has suggested a version of this approach. 

However, the coalition declined to endorse any legislation that has been proposed in Congress. 

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has proposed a bill to provide universal coverage by giving individuals access to various private health plans available in their states. 

"We're going to make a big push ... to fix health-care in this session of Congress," Wyden said. "We don't think the country can afford to sit around and wait for another presidential election to fix health care." 

Health care has gained widespread attention from the 2008 presidential candidates but they mostly focus on covering nine million uninsured children. 

Several studies have found fault with the current U.S. system -- a free-for-all in which employers provide most health care, government programs provide much of the rest and an estimated 46 million Americans are left with no health insurance.