Not long ago, my Congressman emailed out a poll wherein he asked his constituents what they thought of the Democratic health-care plan. Annoyed that my Congressperson was reducing my thoughts on such a complex topic to a “yes” or “no” radio button, I instead wrote him back, saying in brief that I felt our health-care system desperately needed SOME kind of reform.

A week later I got a thorough response from Congressman Carter (or his form-letter-writing staffer, either way) thanking me for my contribution and outlining why he was against “Obamacare.” He led off with a striking couple of sentences:

America has the highest quality health care in the world. A recent medical study on cancer survivability rates showed that Americans are in a lot better shape than Great Britain, Norway, and the European Union nations, all of which have government run health care. For example, the survival rate for those diagnosed with prostate cancer in European Union countries is only 77%; it is 99% in the U.S. Additionally, all female cases of cancer have a survivability rate of 62.9% in the United States, but only 52.7% in England.

Bam! My notions that health care is automatically and entirely better in the rest of the industrialized world came crashing down. Those are some powerful statistics there; has the eeeeevil US health-care system really got cancer whipped like that?
Continue reading Health care pt. 1: Cancer survival rates →