mak2
Active member
Re: Don't get Cancer in the UK ~ what I fear about ObamaCare
I understand exaclty why you must throw out life expectancy and cost per citizen, these are hard fact that cannot be manipulated. The insistanance that healthcare systems and life expectancy are not directly related defies logic, but ignore it if you want.
In great Britian there are 25 deaths per 100000 and 19 per hundred thousand in US due to breast cancer according to the doctor in hte blog. The point is this small a variation can exist between states and regions in US or any healthcare system.
"But just comparing the US and the UK, and saying that the bigger number is ‘better’, misses a deeper truth.
As we’ve written before, the US uses the PSA blood test far more widely than we do in the UK – despite questions over how effective it is at spotting cancers that would actually kill, as opposed to those that cause no symptoms.As a result, the USA has one of the highest recorded rates of prostate cancer in the world.So although it’s undoubtedly ‘better’ at spotting prostate cancers, it’s also fair to say that some of these Americans will never die from their disease.
This ‘overdiagnosis’ inflates the survival statistics, at the expense of ‘overtreating’ men – which is expensive and can cause long-term side effects (which can need further treatment).
So you might just as well argue that the ‘91 per cent’ survival figure could be due to a system that overdiagnoses and overtreats prostate cancer, as opposed to saying our 51 per cent stat is due to poor healthcare in the UK. Bigger is not always better.
Finally, if you look at UK survival rates for early stage prostate cancer, a different picture emerges – men in the UK have a 98.6 per cent five-year survival rate. Clearly, whatever controversies surround the diagnosis of the disease, the NHS is doing a pretty good job of managing it when it’s detected early.
I included this doctors blog because I thought he explained it in a simple manner we could all understand. If you dont understand about the PSA and inflation of survival statistics I will provide more information late, suffice it for now to PSA is high profit, high false postiive and may or may not be beneficial to a system as a whole and definately costs a lot of money.
I have been pretty busy because it is midterm, but I do appreciate those of you who do include actual studites and dont resort to name calling immediately, this is really how we discuss topic and learn from each other. Well of course I dont know anything, but.......... I will get back to this tonight.
I understand exaclty why you must throw out life expectancy and cost per citizen, these are hard fact that cannot be manipulated. The insistanance that healthcare systems and life expectancy are not directly related defies logic, but ignore it if you want.
In great Britian there are 25 deaths per 100000 and 19 per hundred thousand in US due to breast cancer according to the doctor in hte blog. The point is this small a variation can exist between states and regions in US or any healthcare system.
"But just comparing the US and the UK, and saying that the bigger number is ‘better’, misses a deeper truth.
As we’ve written before, the US uses the PSA blood test far more widely than we do in the UK – despite questions over how effective it is at spotting cancers that would actually kill, as opposed to those that cause no symptoms.As a result, the USA has one of the highest recorded rates of prostate cancer in the world.So although it’s undoubtedly ‘better’ at spotting prostate cancers, it’s also fair to say that some of these Americans will never die from their disease.
This ‘overdiagnosis’ inflates the survival statistics, at the expense of ‘overtreating’ men – which is expensive and can cause long-term side effects (which can need further treatment).
So you might just as well argue that the ‘91 per cent’ survival figure could be due to a system that overdiagnoses and overtreats prostate cancer, as opposed to saying our 51 per cent stat is due to poor healthcare in the UK. Bigger is not always better.
Finally, if you look at UK survival rates for early stage prostate cancer, a different picture emerges – men in the UK have a 98.6 per cent five-year survival rate. Clearly, whatever controversies surround the diagnosis of the disease, the NHS is doing a pretty good job of managing it when it’s detected early.
I included this doctors blog because I thought he explained it in a simple manner we could all understand. If you dont understand about the PSA and inflation of survival statistics I will provide more information late, suffice it for now to PSA is high profit, high false postiive and may or may not be beneficial to a system as a whole and definately costs a lot of money.
I have been pretty busy because it is midterm, but I do appreciate those of you who do include actual studites and dont resort to name calling immediately, this is really how we discuss topic and learn from each other. Well of course I dont know anything, but.......... I will get back to this tonight.
