'I believe for the first time in American history, health care reform will be done.'
That's the incoming Secretary for Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, speaking at a national conference on health care reform in December.
Daschle is right to be optimistic. Too many Americans lack health insurance, and there are many opportunities for reform.
Unfortunately, his reform ideas center on the government's playing a larger role in the health care market. This concept is popular among voters, as there's a widespread perception that health care systems abroad are a runaway success. The media tends to present those systems in the best light possible, highlighting their apparent benefits and ignoring their downsides. As a result, many Americans have overly positive visions of what life is like under universal health care -- and so support its creation here at home.
The truth is that government-controlled health care is not free. It comes at a great cost in the form of high taxes, long waiting lines and frequent denials of coverage.
French citizens pay about 20 percent more in income tax than Americans, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The Fraser Institute reports that Canadians face an average wait of almost 18 weeks between a general practitioner's referral and actual treatment by a specialist.
In the United Kingdom, the national health care agency won't cover treatments with a yearly cost of more than $46,000. British citizens pay 11 percent to 12 percent of their weekly income to finance the country's health care system. Many popular pharmaceutical drugs aren't covered by public insurance.
It's estimated that about one- fifth of taxes collected in Canada go toward funding the country's health system.
So much for 'free' health care.
Most universal health care systems also impose strict price controls on pharmaceutical drugs. But, as a new study from the Rand Corp. finds, introducing similar price regulations in the U.S. would stifle drug innovation, resulting in reduced average life expectancy.
My organization, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, recently conducted a poll of more than a thousand 18- to 24 year-old Americans -- the 'millennial' generation with great influence on political and economic trends.
Almost 85 percent believe that America's health care system is in need of reform. Seventy percent support the creation of a new government program to manage and administer public health insurance.
That support drops dramatically when the respondent is informed of the potential costs of new government health care programs.
More than half said they would not support any health care reforms that would require a tax increase. Sixty-two percent said they would not support any reforms that could increase physician wait times or restrict access to new medical treatments. Nearly two-thirds said they would not support additional government interference in the doctor-patient decision-making process.
This survey's results indicate a very large divide between what young people are hearing from politicians and pundits about universal health care and what measures they're willing to accept in practice.
This insight into how millennial voters think about health care reform shows that both sides of the debate need to do a better job of educating Americans about the costs and benefits of particular health care reforms.
The costs of universal health care are real and substantial. It's imperative that voters and legislators see the other side of the story before any reforms are implemented.
Peter Pitts is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former associate commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
