National Health Care

There was an article recently in "Investor's Business Daily". It provided some interesting comparisons of our system of health care, versus that of Canada and the U.K., which have Nationalized systems. The article pointed out that two thirds of the men and women in the United States had survived Cancer five years after the diagnosis! So that's got to be pretty good!
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In the U.K, that figure dropped all the way down to 46%. Canada fared even worse, at 42%. We are seeing a lot more Cancer Survivors here with our patch work system. We can probably improve on it, and we just might do that. Meanwhile, remember to tip the hat to what we have here in the United States. We are saving lives, and that's a good thing.
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First of all, it is very unfair to be comparing the health care systems of three very dissimilar countries as the U.S., Canada, and England. While it is true that we share a common heritage and language, along with a fondness for Monty Python, we do have our differences.
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The population of the United States is enormous compared to the other two countries. While a lot of our people live in the cities, like they do in Canada, there is still a big percentage of the public who are happy to just live in the Vastness.
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Canada's population is relatively tiny, with most Canadians living in the cities of Canada's Deep South. The rest of the country is an empty place.
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I really can't comment on Canada's health care system. I am sure that it works pretty good some of the time. Just like anything else.
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England has a much larger population than Canada does. Still, it only amounts to about a third of the people that we have here in the United States.
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England is an Island Nation. England is relatively tiny. They do have a lot of empty, too. These empty places are more commonly known as Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. There is a reason for this. Over the years people discovered that it was going to be hard to feed their families with nothing but wind and rocks. A lot of them moved away, creating even more empty. The rest of them had to settle for becoming Englishmen. To be fair, my grandfather was English. He jumped a steamer when he was twelve, and fled for opportunities here in America. He was a smart guy.
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England has no more room for the English. They are dying to get rid of some. This tends to explain why so many more people in England are dying from Cancer versus here in the good old USA. England is full up. They have to thin the herd.
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The National Health Service in England makes it possible for everyone to go see a doctor, only not at convenient times, like when you are sick, for example. In England, everything gets doled out to everybody else by the National Health Service, like spam. Then they have to make decisions about what types of drugs and treatments they can afford to offer. They are being very fair about the whole thing.
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If there is a Cancer medicine approved for widespread use in the United States, the chances are pretty good that it will be approved for in England, eventually. But that does not automatically mean that the drug will be provided by the National Health Service. They are on a strict budget.
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The drug Tarceva is one example of this. Tarceva has been shown to be very effective in extending the lives of a particular class of lung Cancer patients. Tarceva is not cheap. It can cost over $2000 per month for these little pills, which you must take once a day.
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The last time I checked, the National Health Service had made a decision that they simply could not afford to offer Tarceva as part of their national health care system. They figured it was much better to allow their English brothers and sisters to die a little sooner than they might have otherwise.
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The folks at the National Health Service are very busy people. They have an important job to do, and they are only allowed to spend so much. They have a lot of other English to take care of.

Mr. Charming