For years, health care around the world has had problems. In response, many countries have implemented a socialized health plan as a “solution.” In one such country, Britain, Grace-Marie Turner, a writer for the McClatchy Newspapers, recorded one of these “solutions”. In some British hospitals, there were even seriously ill patients in the hallways on the gurneys, waiting to receive medical attention. Some waited days for important procedures. Politicians did not like this. The patients must be admitted faster, they said. The solution of some hospitals: take the wheels off of the gurneys so that they were technically classified as hospital beds. This, of course, didn’t do anything to help the situation, but the statistics looked better to the politicians. This is the kind of health care we can expect should we the people put the system in the government’s hands; one in which admission times are painfully slow, treatment is second rate, and doctors cater to wants of politicians rather than the needs of their patients.

It would be ridiculous to say that American health care is perfect. Of course it needs reform. This is chiefly because of two problems. The first is the cost of health insurance. With health insurance costs rising four times faster than average wages, it’s no surprise this is considered the most prominent of problems. In fact, according to US News and World Report, as many as 57 million Americans reported they had trouble paying their medical bills in 2007. In addition to this, America pays substantially more money per person for health care than any other country in the world. Wikipedia reports that medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in America. The second is the availability of health insurance. While emergency care is widely available, a total of 16% of Americans were uninsured as of 2007. This equates to about 41 million Americans.

At a glance, universal health care might seem like a great idea. However, if a plan like this is approved and passed, a set of terrible consequences will follow. First, with a government sponsored plan like this, the amount of time it would take to receive any sort of treatment would be enormous, the metaphorical line stretching from the front door of the doctor’s office to miles and miles back. This is because people would want treatment for everything. At first look, this may seem understandable. After all, if you have an illness, and your health insurance is covered with a mandatory public option, why not have a doctor look at it? The problem is that people would want medical attention for everything. Common illnesses that were once simply ignored or endured would then be examined by doctors. This would render waiting lists impossibly long, and patients who actually had serious or even life-threatening diseases would have to wait, just like everyone else. Even in Canada, a country with this exact problem, its left-wing Supreme Court found that “access to a waiting list is no access to health care.”

Suppose that, by some miracle, the government would be able to work around this obstacle. There would still be one, unavoidable, dire problem: cost. When repairing a broken item, replacing a lost valuable, filling up the car with gas, and other every day activities, we as humans are prone to ask the question, “How much will this set me back?” It’s a natural response, and one we let influence many decisions in our life. Yet a surprising number of people don’t seem to mind the fact that the predicted cost of organizing and maintaining universal health care is, according to Fox News, $1.2 trillion dollars. That is not a typo, reader. The estimated price is $1.2 trillion dollars. Here it is in numbers: $1,200,000,000,000. If it hasn’t already occurred to you, that is an enormous amount of money. I think we would all agree taxes are already high enough. This would drive the U.S. into a second depression, and leave even our children’s children drowning in debt.

Surely there will be those that think, “Our government is better. We could make it work!” The answer to that is, simply put, no. Anything that is run by the government is slower, clumsier, and more unresponsive than that of private organizations. In fact, the American government has already proved itself incapable of handling medical programs. Take Medicare and Medicaid, two programs that provide insurance to the elderly and the poor, respectively. In terms of money, these two health plans are on a violent, spiraling crash course that makes even Social Security seem like a model of sound business.

Any person genuinely concerned with the state of our country’s care will see that less government control, not more, is what the system needs to function. Although it has its problems, the United States has the best health care in the world. Let’s not ruin it.