For the last decade, Mainers have suffered under some of the fastest- growing medical costs in the nation. Candidates for this fall’s races, therefore, are pushing reform plans of their own, and many are pushing single payer, or variations thereof, as the answer to our health care prayers.

It is easy to see why, given that proponents of such a plan promise that it will lower costs and extend coverage to everyone while maintaining a high level of quality and guaranteeing patient choice in health care decision-making. Sound too good to be true? It is. Not only would a state takeover fail to do any of these things, it would ruin the health care system in place and destroy the economy of the state. Here’s how.

The case for single payer rests on the mistaken premise that the driving force in rising costs is corporate profit. If the government took over, it is argued, the profits would be removed and costs would drop, allowing coverage to be extended to all of the state’s currently uninsured without added expense. Is it really that easy? Not even close.

The truth is that a myriad of factors are driving rising costs, not the least of which is that such a high percentage of health care costs are paid by a third party such as private insurance or government programs like Medicare. In fact, most Americans pay only 5 cents out of pocket of every dollar spent on hospital care, with someone else paying the rest. The problem this creates is that neither patient nor physician has much incentive to keep an eye on costs, so expenses rise.

Simply put, when someone else is paying, you buy more than you would otherwise. A massive RAND Corp. study involving 7,500 people studied over a 10-year span found that people who had 100 percent of their health care costs covered by insurance consumed 50 percent more medical services than those that had less generous coverage, even though they ended up no healthier as a consequence. Single payer systems worldwide continue

to teeter on the brink of insolvency from overuse.

What happens when Maine agrees to pay all health care costs for all citizens? The costs will be staggering. A study on a proposed single payer system for Maryland revealed that it would cost the state a mind-blowing $12 billion a year to operate, requiring a state tax increase of a whopping 233 percent, which would cost the state 117,000 jobs, driving costs still higher.

Advocates of single payer in Maine remain undaunted in the face of overuse of the free system, however, by proposing that price control and system management be turned over to a “quasi-governmental agency” which will presumably run the health care system more efficiently than private insurers do now. Can it? Hardly.

Not only will DHS fail to cut costs, it will take away patient choice. To combat overuse, DHS will have to implement rationing, as is found in Canada and Britain. It has to. There are, after all, only a set number of hospital beds in this state, and no system, public or private, can afford to provide a bed to everyone who wants one. Someone must impose limits on care. Insurance companies and HMOs do that unpopular bit of work now, and single payer would simply replace them with DHS. This agency will decide which medical conditions you will be covered for and which treatments must be used for which ailments. What is saved replacing insurance bureaucrats with government bureaucrats?

And get used to waiting. Single payer systems like those found in Britain and Canada are notable for waiting lists reminiscent of the old Soviet bread lines. Timothy Evans, the director of Britain’s Independent Healthcare Association, reports that not only are 1 million Britons on waiting lists for treatment or surgery on any given day, there are also an astonishing 400,000 more waiting to meet with government health caseworkers so they can be put on the waiting lists in the first place! Waiting, as

any doctor will tell you, can make conditions worse, meaning that single payer has the potential to

actually make us less healthy than we are now.

To see the effects of all this on the quality of care, one need only look to Canada. Canada is one of the world’s wealthiest nations, but its perpetually cash-strapped government-run health care apparatus has, per capita, fewer MRI machines than Mexico. The wait for a simple biopsy, two weeks in the United States is nearly three months in Canada.

Even Canadians with medical issues we think of as routine are suffering. In a speech before the Heritage Foundation, Canadian health reporter David Gretzer stunned the audience with the tragic story of a 23-year-old Canadian man who died last year from a ruptured appendix after being turned away from three separate health facilities due to overcrowding. A 1999 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal reported that in Ontario alone 71 patients died while waiting, with 1,500 others, for common coronary bypass surgery. And this is what single payer advocates want for us?

If Maine were to enact a similar system, the first state to do so, not only would we see a similar plunge in the quality of our medical care, but sick people would come to the state in droves from all over the country. As costs began to skyrocket, healthy young Mainers, already leaving the state for greener economic pastures, will accelerate their flight to escape what will have to be a crushing tax burden.

Thankfully there are more promising options to fix health care such as market-based reforms like medical savings accounts that give power back to the people and use competition to cut costs. As the November elections draw near, then, Mainers need to keep in mind what they truly want in a health care system and look seriously at the plans that candidates offer. Election season is a time of big promises, so be sure that what is promised is something that can truly be delivered. Single payer is misleadingly named, for we’ll all pay dearly if it is adopted, and in more ways that we can know.

Stephen Bowen lives in Rockport and is the Republican candidate for the District 63 House seat. He can be contacted at stephenbowen@msn.com.