One common position among the democratic presidential candidates is the drive for universal health care in this country. Before going to the polls next November, it’s of the utmost importance all Americans scrutinize the implications of socialized medicine for themselves and their children.

A front page story in last Friday’s New York Times (“Hospitals Say They’re Penalized By Medicare for Improving Care”) explicitly illustrates the critical flaws of a socialized health care system, which Medicare indubitably is. For example, “[Doctors] who work to improve care are not paid extra, and poor care is frequently rewarded because it creates the need for more procedures and services.” By removing the profit motive, you remove the motivation to excel. Why work hard when you get paid the same for hardly working?

It’s true that the United States is the only modernized country that does not provide universal health care. For this reason, we also have the best health care available anywhere in the world.

Canada, for example, is the darling of many advocates of socialized medicine. But the realities of Canada’s idealized system loom in stark contrast to the egalitarian utopia its non-Canadian advocates paint it to be.

The fundamental “flaw” with health care from the private sector, as it exists in America today, is that it is “health care for profit.” The insinuation is that health care professionals working to make money (profit) will prioritize their bottom line ahead of their patients’ best interests, assuming these goals are at odds at all.

But what is so different about socialized medicine? In the so-called “single payer” system, the government pays for every citizen’s health care. And where does the government get the money to cover ever-rising health care costs? Taxes, of course, but the exorbitant tax rates required for universal health care are not even its weightiest drawback.

When health care becomes a government expense, it’s only natural the government will try to minimize that expense. This means that the quality of care again takes a back seat to that dastardly bottom line. According to the New York Times article, “Medicare’s payment system hinders attempts to improve care,” in the opinion of “many health care executives.” This makes sense, since better care almost inevitably costs more money.

In a privatized system, if you don’t like your doctor’s frugal practices, you can find a more liberal doctor. When the government has a health care monopoly like under the single payer system, however, you’re left with two choices regarding your health care: take it or leave it.

Money, even government money, doesn’t grow on trees. There are only so many dollars to go around, regardless of patients whose needs may exceed the allotted costs to which doctors must adhere. In 1991, a Quebec physician was suspended from his job for exceeding his yearly quota of delivering 107 babies, according to the Aug. 1991 Medical Sentinel, a journal that advocates privatized medicine.

In Canada, for example, patients are put on notoriously long waiting lists that span from a matter of weeks to several years. It can take three to nine months to even get a consultation with a surgeon. MRI technology is so rare that patients must wait months just to get a scan to diagnose their condition. Even when the doctor, patient and rare transplant organ are available, other hindrances may arise. In early 1999, “a lung transplant had to be cancelled in Toronto. A donor was available … but … [t]ransplant recipients require close observation in an intensive care unit following surgery and no ICU beds were available in Toronto” that day (Medical Sentinel July/Aug. 1999).

Single-payer health care also means that doctors work for the government rather than for the patient; that is, the government, not the patient or his or her family, has the ultimate say in health care decisions. According to a French Canadian newspaper in late 1990s, for example, “hospital personnel took it upon themselves to disconnect a 76-year-old patient from a life-saving respirator.”

Then there is the hard cost to the patient once he or she walks out of the hospital and puts the wage earner hat back on. Though Canada’s current system has been in place less than 20 years, Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Services projects that by the year 2040, Canadian tax rates will be roughly 94.5 percent (they’re “only” about 50 percent now) in order to sustain their health care system as it is now.

Socialized medicine is essentially the HMO from hell, where medical decisions are based on saving money rather than saving lives, much more so than in even the greediest privatized system.