More people in Britain die from cancer thanks to universal healthcare!

My father died of prostate cancer after years of increasing PSA results. It was discovered after spreading to his spine. His primary physician tried a biopsy but didn't refer him to a urologist.

Anyway the article does state that American healthcare is a mess with "fatal flaws".
So how do we improve it?

I agree that Senator Clinton is no expert on health care.

As for my Dad - he joined Care America against my advice. Signed his Medicare over to that HMO.
Because his doctor was the 'gatekeeper' I will never know whether there was an unconscious motivation not to refer his patients to specialists. I know that company required referrals and authorizations. They also penalized doctors financially if the made too many referrals.

http://www.aaaai.org/patients/public...hcareplans.stm

While I don't like the underinvestment aspect of the UK system this article does call into question the original assertion of this thread.

The main reason I think for these poor survival rate figures (& I'm only saying this from living & working as a nurse in the UK & not from any expert vantage point) is that since the introduction of "NICE" (National Institute for Clinical Excellence - or something like that anyway) doctors cannot prescribe some of the newer cancer drugs because they have to be approved for use by the NHS by NICE before they can be prescribed. Also, due to what here in the UK call the "postcode lottery" (basically the care you can get depends on where you live - postcode=zip), some treatments are not paid for in some areas of the country whereas if you live in another place you might get the treatment on the NHS.

We just had a guy recently who was refused life saving brain surgery by his local health authority on the grounds that the cost was too high versus his risk of dying from the operation. However, he has had successful surgery in USA after a massive fund raising drive by his family & friends.

The newer drugs that have been proven to prolong life in bowel cancer etc have been refused licensing by NICE again on cost v benefit grounds and the list of such decisions is endless. I cannot help but think that this must be a major factor in our poor showing.

Even so the NHS is precious & I hope we as a country find a way to make it work. As the above post shows we don't do too badly on the health front in many ways but we need to find a way to better treat those we can save but are failing to at the moment.