Comparing Cancer Survival Rates

This is for you Kris ;)

My sister told me to compare the cancer survival rates in this country compared to countries with socialized health care. Because I was thoroughly sick of doing my homework, I did and this is what I found:

Survival rates of breast cancer patients
Sweden:82%
Japan: 81.6%
Australia:80.7%
Canada: 82.5%
USA: 84%

The US is slightly better, but I hardly think it's a smoking gun. Lets look at some more cancers:

Colon Cancer
Canada: Men-56.1%, Women-58.7%
USA: Men-60.1%, Women-60.1%
Australia: Men-57.8%, Women-57.7%
Japan: Men-63.0%, Women-57.1%

Rectal Cancer
Canada: Men-53.1%, Women-58.7%
USA: Men-56.9%, Women-59.8%
Japan: Men-58.2%, Women-57.6%
Australia: Men-54.8%, Women-59.6%

Definitely not a smoking gun. There is also a table in this article that shows that France comes in at number one for survival rates for women with rectal AND Colon cancer. (Cuba is in there too but they symbolically throw out the data by mentioning that the numbers were inflated and unrealistic and probably doctored by the government).

Now here's what's REALLY interesting about this study. They did a detailed analysis of survival rates in America based on several different factors including race and location. What I find very interesting is that African Americans (who are typically part of the urban poor) had significantly lower survival rates across the board.

Colon Cancer
Black: 51-52%
White: 61%

Rectal
Black: Men-47.4%, Women-49.4%
White: Men-57.3%, Women-60.4%

Breast
Black: 70.9%
White: 84.7%

Now to me, THAT is a smoking gun. That is why we need universal health care. Because large groups of people do not have access to health care because they don't have the money or a good enough job to provide benefits. We need to prevent categorical discrimination across the board and providing universal health care is a decent place to start.


* All information in this blog comes from an article in the Lancet Oncology published by Michel Coleman and company (lots of company, too many to include here). Dr. Coleman is a professor of epidemiology and vital statistics. His web page is here http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/people/coleman.michel.

The link to his article is here http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6W85-4T0WDNG-1-8&_cdi=6645&_user=456938&_orig=browse&_coverDate=08%2F31%2F2008&_sk=999909991&view=c&wchp=dGLbVlW-zSkWA&md5=e52d016d278422ebcdf0b2b034167e83&ie=/sdarticle.pdf *