The Telegraph has reported that the UK now has the lowest cancer survival rates in Europe. To blame?
Cancer experts blamed late diagnosis and long waiting lists.
How long are people waiting? According to Scotland’s Daily Record, cancer patients who are labeled as needing “urgent” treatment are waiting between two and seven months before being taken care of.
Cancer patients are still waiting up to seven months for treatment. Patients are supposed to be treated within 62 days of urgent referral. But figures out yesterday showed only three areas in Scotland were meeting those targets every time. In the worst cases, sufferers were kept hanging on for 220 days.
The figures, for the first three months of the year, show 85.4 per cent of patients across Scotland were seen within 62 days. The target set two years ago is 95 per cent.
Note, the target is still two months and change. This is not for routine cancer treatment but “urgent” treatment. Fortunately for the remaining population, as people slowly and painfully die of cancer, the wait should get less by sheer mathematics.
On a more serious note, we are actually talking about literally hundreds of thousands of people needlessly dying per year waiting in line.
The power is in the math - per 100,000 men diagnosed, 21,500 of them will die in the UK system who would have survived in America. For women, 10,200 per 100,000 would die. Consider that in the US alone, 1.4 million people will be diagnosed this year.
Much like the American Education predicament, where the US spends double or triple on per-pupil education with worse results - the UK is spending three times the amount that Poland is on care for comparable results.
Which country had the best rate of survival - the most evil, greedy, selfish nation on the planet of course* - the United States.
*sarcasm intended.
yeah, it was nice of Moore not to mention the waiting lines.
You’re kidding me? He doesn’t address the wait? Wow!
But at least it’s free!!*
*free being an interesting term, since someone will indeed be paying for it, unless the doctors, nurses, staff are all working pro bono and the drug companies are donating their product at no cost.
Moore just chooses to ignore the giant pink elephant in the room.
He chooses to ignore himself??? He and I have something in common after all.
I don’t think the British even like their healthcare system. I hear nothing but complaints about NHS. Compare that to Canada, where the population is proud of their system. Clearly Canada is doing something right that the UK is not. So…what is the difference?
But even in Canada, they have pretty good wait lines. I think part of the difference is the option available to Canadians to go get their health care in the USA, which relieves some of the strain on the Canadian system.
The Canadian system wasn’t sufficient for this particular need. I saw this about there not being an available neonatal unit in all of Canada where these babies could be born. Could that be true? Canada is a big place, but I guess they aren’t prepared for lots of babies.
[Formatting fixed by Jew at Thainamu’s request]
Can anyone go in and fix the code so my comment shows up properly? (We need the preview mode…)
I can add the link back in if you give me the URL. It didn’t get saved in your comment.
And I just noticed that regular users don’t have the option to edit their comments. Is that a Wordpress option we can change?
http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/Health/story?id=3506690 is the url and here is the paragraph I was trying to do in blockquotes:
The Jepps live in Calgary, Canada, but were sent to the states after learning that every single neonatal unit in Canada was too crowded to handle four premature births. One long hour after Karen Jepp went into labor and dozens of frantic phone calls later, the Jepps found Benefis Healthcare System in Montana — 300 miles away. They were on a plane shortly thereafter.
I would like the ability to correct my comments.
I looked through the Wordpress settings and I can’t figure it out. I don’t know how to give you the ability to edit your comments. I’m sorry. And yes, a preview would be nice, but I can’t find any setting for that either.