Monday, November 05, 2007

UK'S BAD MEDICINE

"November 5, 2007 -- Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign released a radio ad last week in which the candidate praised American health care for curing him of prostate cancer and wondered what might have happened to him under the socialized medicine practiced in the United Kingdom, where survival rates for that condition are far lower.

In the ad, now running in New Hampshire, Giuliani says: "I had prostate cancer five, six years ago. My chance of surviving prostate cancer - and thank God I was cured of it - in the United States: 82 percent. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England: only 44 percent under socialized medicine." He drew those statistics from an article I wrote for the summer 2007 issue of City Journal.

Let me be very clear about why the Giuliani campaign is correct: The percentage of people diagnosed with prostate cancer who die from it is much higher in Britain than in the United States. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reports on both the incidence of prostate cancer in member nations and the number of resultant deaths. According to OECD data published in 2000, 49 Britons per 100,000 were diagnosed with prostate cancer and 28 per 100,000 died of it.

This means that 57 percent of Britons diagnosed with prostate cancer died of it; consequently, just 43 percent survived. Economist John Goodman, in "Lives at Risk," arrives at precisely the same conclusion: "In the United States, slightly less than one in five people diagnosed with prostate cancer dies of the disease. In the United Kingdom, 57 percent die."

By DAVID GRATZER

The Brits are of course up in a howl over the news that someone would be callous enough to tell the truth about socialized medicine in Europe, but Rudy did nothing but offer what anyone paying attention already knew. Being neither a doctor nor an insurance salesman I can but do as we all; take heed and be wary of liberals wanting us even more beholding to them than we are.

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