Remember that health care system in Britain that some elected officials so desperately want to emulate (some even acknowledge that the public option is just a stealth way to get to a single-payer system)? As IWF has said all along, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
From BBC News:
Failure to pick up cancer at an early stage costs the lives of up to 10,000 a year in England, the government’s cancer tsar says.
National Cancer Director Professor Mike Richards described the situation as “unacceptable”.
Currently, 90% of patients are diagnosed by symptoms, rather than through screening.
Professor Richards’ comments will feature in a forthcoming article in the British Journal of Cancer.
In the piece, Professor Richards says: “These delays in the patient presenting with symptoms and cancer being diagnosed at a late stage inevitably costs lives.
“The situation is unacceptable so the first big step has been to understand why the delays occur.”
Delays in detection and treatment are inevitable under a system where the government controls the nation’s health care system, because controlling costs is (and will be here if it is allowed to pass) a key priority. The government dictates all aspects of citizens’ access to certain services and treatments, including the location and size of treatment centers.
And don’t forget, the Lancet Oncology, a prominent health care trade journal, demonstrated in a 2008 study that the five-year survival rate from breast cancer in the United States is 83.9%; the five-year survival rate in the United Kingdom is 69.8%.
I’m all for free trade, but this is one thing we do NOT want to import from the UK.