"The rising cost of medical care, and particularly of hospital care, over the past decade has been felt by persons of all ages." This is a direct quote from the secretary of Health, Education and Welfare to the Ways and Means committee in 1959.

As evidenced by this statement, the rampant rise in health care costs is a decades-old problem. There is no debate that our system is broken. What is debatable is the role government should play in leading the reform.

The inherent problem with government-run health care is that it's subject to the whims of elected officials who know nothing about patient care. When this is combined with the need to satisfy constituents and lobbyists, the end result is a system filled with rules disguised as quality measures that frequently change yearly.

A brief look at our current Medicare program proves that despite more than 50 years of involvement, government has completely failed to contain health care costs and our legislators lack the expertise to effectively lead this endeavor. As a result, our representatives must rely on appointees, who are naturally promoting their own self-interests.

The passage of Medicare was not without difficulty as dozens of groups, including the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association, initially opposed the legislation for literally dozens of reasons. Ultimately the legislation was accepted, as it promised full payment for services, something the private insurers were changing.

Naturally, this "selling" of Medicare quickly resulted in a program with staggering costs. With the passing of the decades, the response from Congress was to promise more and pay for less. Despite less than 19 percent of Medicare dollars supporting the doctor's office, Congress adopted a formula to balance Medicare overruns solely on the backs of your physicians and staff. Since most doctors would rather care for patients than run a business, they made an easy target for legislatures in need of prey. Today, the Medicare formulas want to cut an additional 35 percent -- an amount that would result in a collapse of the system, as doctors would no longer be able to care for this patient group.

With thoughtful regulation, private industry can meet all the stated goals of the Obama administration.

Recently, President Obama praised the ingenuity of Safeway corporation for creating ways to insure more employees, for less money, by promoting healthy lifestyles. If the United States had adopted the Safeway approach to delivering health care in 2005, the direct savings to the taxpayer would be more than $550 billion today. This is only one example of how the ingenuity of private industry quickly created results that government has never been able to match.

For the record, the $550 billion savings is more than four times the $150 billion that most experts believe it would take to insure today's 47 million uninsured, a number that includes 15 million illegal immigrants and millions more young people who are cheap to insure but often choose otherwise.

A government-run health care program has at least one other major pitfall.

Employers will have incentive to displace employees to the government-run plan. In the end, this will leave us with another large socialized program run by legislators who are quick to point blame and never accept accountability.

Is this really what we want?

Dr. GARY GONSALVES is a North County anesthesiologist and co-founder of Stop Taxing Us. Contact him at www.StopTaxingUs.com.