Zeal For Truth

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.