Fighting Cancer: US vs Europe

Pajamas Media ^ | Linda Halderman

[AJKauf]

British citizens suffering from lung cancer are half as likely to survive for five years compared with Americans diagnosed with the disease.

The American survival rate for leukemia is almost 50% while the European rate is significantly lower, just 35%. Esophageal carcinoma is often deadly, but compared with their European counterparts, American patients are more than twice as likely to survive the disease for five years...

[Diogenesis]

Socialized medicine.

[muawiyah]

To a degree little appreciated cancer treatment in the US is pretty doggone close to the European socialized medicine model. There's tremendous government subsidy involved.

I think the difference arises out of the more advanced nature of our cancer treatment system. We are just flat out technologically ahead of those guys.

[nickcarraway]

BUMP

[CoastWatcher]

Of course with the vast socialist state going bankrupt it does not hurt to have your sick and elderly dying sooner rather than later. Is this the reason there is a delay in receiving timely treatment.

[muawiyah]

Again, the Europeans lag behind in medical science. They put their money into “preventive” medicine ~ as if that has any realistic affect on genetically driven conditions (e.g. most cancers).

[Brilliant]

Socialism. But think of the good side. At least they won’t be polluting their gene pool with those who are unfit.

[exhaustguy]

If it is a subsidy then it is an indirect one. My dad had pretty good retirement health insurance when he got cancer, and he went through over $100,000 of his retirement before going onto Medicare. He then died less than a year later. The state made out like a bandit on his Social Security payments.

He had the choice when he retired whether to keep his health insurance or not. Thankfully he chose to keep it. He was close to the lifetime max when he switched to Medicare.

My employer offers nothing in the way of retirement health care (and they are a very respected Fortune 50 company). I am maxing out my HSA every year, but I have to plan on working until I am eligible for Medicare.

Health care is the elephant in the room. Unless an individual DOA’s in an accident or has a sudden coronary event you are looking at an expenditure of $500,000-$1,000,000 at the end of life (x2 for a couple). Someone has got to pay it. Saving $5,000 per couple is not going to get you there, and I bet most couples are not even close to that amount.

Consider that nursing home care also costs at least $60,000 per year, and you can see that society is headed towards bankruptcy unless some serious decisions are made.

Since most everyone his headed towards these scenarios insurance does not matter. Also at 45 I cannot trust that any long term care insurance provider will step up to the plate when I will actually need the money (at about 75???). Right now the long term care solution is handled by Medicaid Title 19 which is not pretty. The state and feds pick up probably $40 to 50K of the above $60K per year. There is no way that my wife is physically capable of taking care of my grandmother in our home, and I work 10+ hrs/day so how would I be able to do much more?

I hate to say it, but we may eventually have to go to the Eskimo on the ice solution (put the oldsters out to die). These are economic facts.

[muawiyah]

Only if we bring in more polar bears. Otherwise that simply won’t work.

[Misschuck]

I know someone who was on oxygen for two years. They never paid for one thing, except an extra nebulizer. That means masks, tubing, tanks, O2 machines and then liquid O2, all delivered.

[tiki]

Yeah, but, I don’t think there is any embargo on the sale of our medical technology. In fact I think there would be a lot of companies more than willing. American hospitals and doctors buy and use that technology, it isn’t free.

[muawiyah]

European systems operate under the theory that much disease can be prevented through regular medical checkups and "preventative medicine".

They are NOT interested in buying the best stuff.

[rhetorica]

My mother was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer in January of 2007. To date she has spent less than $300.00 out of pocket. She has Medicare, parts A, B and D. We have thus far not exerpeinced any problem getting her any treatment her doctor has prescribed. It is funny how you never hear about the system working.

[reformedliberal]

We have an elderly acquaintance on Medicaid who has had full payment and tx at a superb teaching hospital for bilateral breast cancer/mastectomy/radiation/chemo, laryngeal cancer and removal of the larynx and esophageal cancer, including an attempt at a radical transplantation procedure involving a piece of sterilized bowel used to replace part of the esophagus that failed. She has no family capable of taking care of her and is a nursing facility. In between bouts of cancer, she had home nursing care, as well. She has never faced any denial of any treatment that we are aware of. By now, her bill must be in the millions, over the past 8-10 years.

Her late husband also received a lot of treatment and care for rheumatoid arthritis and congestive heart failure, plus dementia, at the end. He also had about 10 months of home nursing care before having to be institutionalized.

I have seen a lot of orthopedic surgery provided to Medicaid patients, as well. Never heard a word about any sort of problem with provision or payment.

[denydenydeny]

The typical standard of the success or failure in cancer treatment is the five-year survival rate, and the USA has an overwhelming statistical advantage in that area.

So one of the fallback positions that defenders of socialized health care have gone to is to instead look at death rates rather than survival rates:

Another way of comparing treatment of prostate cancer in the U.S. and Britain is to look at the mortality rates from the disease. Here the two countries are much closer. The graph below shows deaths per 100,000 males in each country. About 25 men out of 100,000 are dying from prostate cancer every year in both the U.K. and the U.S.

Of course it's incredibly bad faith to look at death rates rather than five-year survival rates...because, news flash, there is no cure for cancer. Of course the DEATH rates are going to be similar. But what means everything to the patient and his family is how long you live, and in that department socialized medicine fails utterly.

[socialismisinsidious]

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