If America can’t ultimately solve the growing health care crisis, it won’t be for lack of talking about it.

I’m here this week at the Fifth Annual World Health Care Congress in Washington, where an intimate group of some 1,800 “prestigious leaders from business, health care and government” have gathered at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel to “have an honest exchange of ideas … to create a dialogue to advance quality, improve cost and expand access in health care, both nationally and abroad.”

That’s a lot of lofty talk, and the speakers are pretty lofty too. On Monday morning, I was treated to a discussion on “The Presidential Health Care Agenda” with representatives of the three leading presidential candidates, the chairman and CEO of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plans and former Secretary of State George Shultz. Their conclusion? It’s that 2009 “is the year something will happen” for health care reform.

Unfortunately, that’s the kind of analysis you sometimes hear when you get so many CEOs, big shots and health care muckety-mucks together to discuss something that everyone knows we need to fix—but just don’t know exactly how to do it.

What I was expecting here was more focused discussion and analysis, such as we recently had in Workforce Management with our special report on consumer-driven health care, or our story a few months ago when we wrote about health care transparency. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that in any sessions or hear it from any of the speakers.

In fairness to everyone at the World Health Care Congress, the high-flown discussions may all be moot, depending on who wins the race for the White House. My guess is that the new resident there will have a lot to say about how we tackle the health care crisis.

Stay tuned.