With health care premiums going up every year, most folks welcome any promise of relief. One of the solutions, of course, being bantered about by political hopefuls, would be universal health care.

Speaking for ourselves, this is not a good option; the thought of the government running our health care system sends chills up and down our spine.

On the surface, it may sound wonderful with its unspoken but inferred promises that we would pay much less for our health care, and everyone would be covered.

Personally, we think our government has a rather poor track record in the medical field. Many retirees assumed Medicare would provide them with the medical care they would need in their old age. Then we add Medicare Part B, to pay for doctors' fees; this presently costs around $95 a month, and, like Medicare, is designed to offer another layer of coverage. A couple of years ago, along comes Medicare Part D, drug coverage, designed to "protect" people from high drug charges, and everyone is supposed to sign up, or pay penalties if they delay enrollment. Unfortunately, Medicare Part A plus Medicare Part B plus Medicare Part D, all added together, still leave the would-be patient on the short end, and, he or she then turns to a wide variety of companion plans, intended to "fill in the gap." If you add all of these together, your costs begin to creep closer and closer to regular health care coverage before you retired, back when you were getting a weekly paycheck.

With the rising costs of all of these government health care programs, plus the mess (we don't know how else to put it) in our Social Security system, thanks to past administrations which have seen fit to "borrow" from it to the point where it may be in serious trouble in coming years, we're sorry, folks, but we can't get excited about the possibility of universal health care provided by our government. Sadly, we think a government-run health care system is probably coming whether we like it or not, but it doesn't give us a warm and fuzzy feeling. We foresee big problems, lack of choice, delay in treatment, and, before we know it, costs that go up and up and up.

Our health care system is in such deep trouble that we don't know how it will ever recover, but we definitely don't think the way out should be government-run health care.