This election year, many will call for "universal health care" promising that it's a simple solution to problems we face. But the facts prove otherwise.
Those who advocate a government-run health system for the United States often point to the British National Health Service and the Canadian health system as models of state-financed -- and high-quality -- health care. Just look at the statistics and international rankings from groups such as the World Health Organization, they say.
Don't be fooled. As the saying goes, statistics are like a bathing suit. What they show you is interesting, but what they conceal is essential.
And what does the World Health Organization's data conceal? That the United Kingdom and Canadian health care systems focus more on saving money than on caring for patients. As a result, citizens of these countries experience long wait times, a lack of access to certain treatments and, in many instances, substandard medical care.
For example, a typical Canadian seeking surgical or other therapeutic treatment had to wait 18.3 weeks in 2007 -- an all-time high. Approximately 875,000 Canadians are currently on waiting lists for medical treatment.
Many Canadians can't even get routine care. Of those who sought routine or ongoing care in 2005, one in six had trouble even getting into a doctor's office for a routine procedure or check-up.
It's no better across the Atlantic. The average wait time for bypass surgery in New York is 17 days -- compared to 72 days in the Netherlands and 59 days in Sweden.
Patients with serious illnesses such as cancer face much longer odds of survival in government-run health care systems. In the United Kingdom, the five-year survival rate for patients diagnosed with breast cancer early on is 78 percent -- compared to 98 percent for similar patients in the U.S.
People tend not to realize that such grim statistics are part and parcel of universal health care.
Last autumn, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest found this out firsthand. Our organization interviewed people on the streets of New York City and asked them if they'd prefer "government" health care or "universal" health care.
They overwhelmingly chose "universal" health care. Nobody realized that they were the same thing.
What's worse, when asked how much more they'd be willing to pay in taxes to support universal health care, many responded, "We want it to be free, like in Europe and Canada."
It's easy to understand why the public doesn't know the truth about universal health care. Politicians and polemicists have clouded the issue, deliberately ignoring the major problems with government-run health care and promising that "universal health care" will be "free."
But even in health care, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Our national conversation about health care has to advance beyond vague concepts and convenient political rhetoric. Government guarantees of universal care may sound appealing, but as universal systems elsewhere have shown, those guarantees are little more than hot air.
Everyone agrees that health care reform is needed. The hard part will be finding a solution that is workable, responsible and puts patients first.
Peter Pitts is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest in New York City and a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner.