88% More Likely to Die? Cancer Survival in the U.K. vs. the U.S.

Here in Progressive Paradise, where I live, I'm hearing a lot of uncritical acceptance of the "far better" health care available in the U.K. than in the U.S.

Many people here believe with all their hearts that a government takeover of the U.S. health care system is the way to go, in fact, the only humane and charitable way to go.

Below are some statistics about cancer survival in the U.S. versus in the U.K, as published in the Sunday Times. These statistics are not insignificant: in the U.S., half of all men and one third of all women will develop cancer during their lifetimes, and millions of Americans are living with or have conquered the disease. I ask you to put some faces to these facts: the faces of the cancer survivors you know, and the faces of their families:

[T]his is going to be painful for the NHS’s supporters to admit, we Americans have much better cancer survival rates. A study of cancer survival rates in 31 countries published last year in The Lancet bears this out. America was consistently in the top three for both men and women in the four different kinds of cancer studied. Britain tended to rank about 20th.

For example, a woman with breast cancer is 88% more likely to die within five years of diagnosis in Britain than in America. A man with prostate cancer is six times as likely to die within five years in Britain than in America. For various types of colon and rectal cancers, both men and women are 40% more likely to die in Britain than in America within five years of diagnosis.

The reason for this difference is twofold. First, Americans are more likely to get tested, thanks to the lack of rationing, and therefore the cancers are likely to be diagnosed sooner. This naturally makes them more curable. Second, unrationed American healthcare throws a ton of money at cancer, relative to Britain. If one uses a linear programming-style health resources rationing system as the NHS does, cancer is a very poor use of resources.

To reiterate, in Britain:

• women with breast cancer are 88% more likely to die within 5 years;
• men with prostate cancer are 6 times more likely to die within 5 years;
• men and women with colon or rectal cancer are 40% more likely to die within 5 years.
  

That's an interesting set of statistics to bring to the next conversation in which you are told how much better the British health care system is than the U.S. system.

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