Is this the level of Health Care we want?

USA has highest cancer survival/UK lowest: http://guide.opendns.com/?url=USA+has+highest+cancer+survival%2FUK+lowest%3A&client=ff20

UK lags behind western world in health care: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jul/17/health.cancer?gusrc=rss&feed=science

UK cancer survival rates lowest in Europe: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1551098/Cancer-survival-rates-worst-in-western-Europe.html

Socilaised health for you, what do you think, should it be implemented in place of a system that is working?
SDF – I can also see your point, this perhaps is where regulators could step in .
Prester John – Bollox, a friend of min took a few days to have his ingrowing toe nail operated on with Private Insurance, 6 months on the NHS and twice his wife was sent home from hospital because they needed her bed fro someone else and she’d been prepped for surgery both times.

Last time I checked over 80% of women in England survived Breast Cancer.

http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/default.asp?page=3317

As for prostrate cancer it has a over a 70% survival rate in the UK, which is slightly above the EU Average.

http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/prostate/incidence/

Only 1.5% of NHS Patients die following Major Surgery according to the latest reports.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6732990.ece

One in four of all NHS patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery is older than 75.

What are the Cancer Survival rates for the 47 million uninsured in the US.

A recent study by the American Medical Association found that white middle-aged Americans are less healthy than their English counterparts. Americans aged 55 to 64 are up to twice as likely to suffer from diabetes, lung cancer and high blood pressure as English people of the same age.

The healthiest Americans had similar disease rates to the least healthy English, the Journal of the American Medical Association study found.

So Americans are twice as likely to have certain cancers in the first place such as Lung Cancer and this may be reflected in survival statistics.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4965034.stm

As for Cancer Survival Rates they are subject to numerous collation factors relating to definition and recording.

http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/news/behindtheheadlines/europeancancersurvival/

Quote:

Dr Harry Burns, lead clinician for cancer in Scotland – the equivalent of England’s newly appointed cancer tsar – said that figures showing higher death rates for Britain than Europe and America were not comparing like with like.

The system for registering cancer deaths is much tighter in Britain than elsewhere. A cancer patient who dies of a heart attack will be registered as a cancer death in the UK, while other countries’ cancer registries tend to understate their death rates, Dr Burns said.

Eurocare II throws up oddities which cast doubt on the validity of the figures. The study, showing five-year survival rates from 1978 to 1989 for 17 countries, suggests Estonia has the best rate for certain cancers, above that of prosperous Germany and France.

It also shows that immigrants to Switzerland have a higher survival rate than the resident population – because most return to their home countries in their final months and their deaths are not recorded.

Separate evidence from international trials shows that British patients included in the trials do just as well as patients from other countries, casting doubt on the claims that treatment is less good in Britain.

Dr Burns said: “Until we have a properly designed study comparing like with like, it is daft and demoralising to say we do badly. There is no evidence that British patients are dying more frequently than they need to. We are underselling ourselves and it doesn’t help public confidence.”

His view was backed yesterday by Dr Peter Boyle, the director of epidemiology and biostatistics at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan. Dr Boyle said international comparisons could not be relied on because the disease might be more advanced at diagnosis in some countries than in others.”There may well be differences [in survival] but we can’t say whether they are due to treatment, diagnosis or something else. I don’t think anyone knows the true position,” he said.

Dr Boyle said global comparisons of this kind were meaningless: ” Is spending money the key thing or is it spending it appropriately? We need to know the outcome of higher spending for individual patients, but that is difficult to assess.” Indeed the best cancer units in Britain provided care that is the equal of any in the world.

As for UK Cancer Services they have received a much needed boost in funding with the launch of the UK NHS Cancer Plan in 2000, with a Government target of reducing the death rate for cancer by 20% in people by 2010, whilst good progress has been made recently in Britain to improve cancer survival rates already in recent decades with a reduction of more than 12% between 1995 – 1997 and 2001 – 2003, and cancer survival rates are now at record levels and improving vastly as new regional centres and specialist research centres continue to open across the UK.

http://www.cancer.nhs.uk/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5785681/Deaths-from-common-cancers-at-40-year-low.html

As for UK Cancer Services they have received a much needed boost in funding with the launch of the UK NHS Cancer Plan in 2000.

http://www.cancer.nhs.uk/

Alan Grayson on Bill Maher: GOP Health Care Reform Would Be Letting You Bring A Gun to the Doctor

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