Jul. 8, 2008 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- CONGRESS HAS three working days this week to come to a decision on Medicare funding, and the whole process leading up to this is a foretaste of how single-payer -- read that socialized -- medicine would work.

Medicare has been on schedule for an automatic 10.6 percent cut in reimbursement fees doctors receive for treating Medicare patients. Such cuts have been scheduled for a number of years, but Congress has balked when met by public howls.

A temporary fix to this latest cut was approved by the House but failed by one vote in the Senate. Republicans there opposed this fix because it cuts into funding for Medicare Advantage, which lets seniors use federal dollars to buy private health coverage.

The market for Advantage is tremendous, with more than one out of five of the 44 million people on Medicare signed up. But that's anathema for those acolytes of government controlled medicine, for which Medicare is the camel's nose under the tent.

But with a growing number of baby boomers coming of Medicare age, reimbursement cuts mean real cuts for doctors. Understandably, they lobby against them. Lest anyone think that Medicare is a solid public investment, the Medicare Trustees note in their latest report that the program has an unfunded liability of about $36 trillion over the next 75 years. That would raise the expenditures for Medicare alone from 3.2 percent of GDP in 2007 to 10.8 percent by 2082.

Meanwhile, what else bodes for taxpayers if liberals hijack the entire health care industry and put it under their control? 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.

But the U.K. 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.

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, and some who can afford it come to the United States for treatment.

Patients with serious illnesses like cancer face much longer odds of survival in government-run health care systems. In the U.K., 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.

Such grim statistics are part and parcel of government-run universal health care systems.

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.

Meanwhile, we await what happens in Washington this week. A word to the wise: Hang onto your wallet.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0154-26511296