Bill Gates will step into the national debate over state budgets Thursday with a call for states to rethink their health care and pension systems, which he says stifle funding for public schools.
Mr. Gates said he will use a high-profile conference Thursday in Long Beach, Calif., to urge that more attention be paid to how states calculate their employee-pension funding and health-care obligations.
The comments come after Mr. Gates spent more than a year studying the issue and enlisting the advice of leading academics and others.
The talk will be at a meeting of leading thinkers called the TED conference.
