Over the past month we have witnessed politicians' advocate national health care. Many people feel it is the government's duty to provide health care for all of its citizens. While this is a noble goal, people fail to see the detrimental effects this would have on society and health care as a whole.,”

Over the past month we have witnessed politicians advocate national health care. Many people feel it is the government's duty to provide health care for all of its citizens. While this is a noble goal, people fail to see the detrimental effects this would have on society and health care as a whole.

There are many examples of countries who have attempted to implement a national health care system and one is Great Britain. Britain implemented this system in 1948 and for the first 13 years, no new hospitals were built last year and hospital staffs increased by 28 percent, while output went down by 11 percent. Today these numbers are worse because a massive bureaucracy has risen up, which acts, in many cases, only to benefit itself, and decides where and how much medical care to give, rather than allowing individuals or the market to decide.

The lack of competition has caused technological advances to either remain stagnant or to move forward very slowly, this, in contrast to the United States where medical technology has moved forward at an extremely rapid pace. In fact, the majority of all progress made in Great Britain has been made by the private sector. Here the doctors are encouraged to work longer hours, because their pay is directly related to it. Here the doctors are encouraged to find more efficient ways to treat their patients. And here is where many British citizens are forced to go.

Price controls force public physicians to ration medicine, which creates waiting lines for people to receive the drugs they need. In the private sector supply and demand governs the distribution of medicine and people are able to receive the drugs they need. Thus many British citizens have to pay for their medical care twice, once through taxes and again when they go to private individuals to receive the care they really need.

These are the consequences of government involvement in a health care system. Waste and stagnation are the most noticeable, but the most important is the removal of choice from the individual. In privatized medicine each individual decides what medical coverage he wants to pay for. In socialized medicine the individual pays, through his taxes, into a massive bureaucracy which takes money off the top and then decides what medical coverage, it feels, is good for him. Because everyone pays a disproportionate amount in taxes, based upon income, into this system, the economist Milton Friedman states, "There is no connection between what you pay and the actuarial value of what you are entitled to receive."

Private individuals, churches and charities should be the ones that reach out to those who need help, not the government. In fact, a recent study by Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, showed that religious conservatives are far more charitable than advocates of the idea that the government should redistribute income.

Moral responsibility is an individual matter, not a social matter.

Christensen is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences.

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