Health Care BS

You know you’re in for a tedious read when a blog post contains the shopworn “torture” metaphor in its title. Thus, it was with a sigh of resignation that I slogged through Joe Paduda’s response to my recent post about Lancet Oncology’s study of cancer survival rates.

Paduda disputes my claim that the U.S. has the best health care system, but his position is so difficult to support that he needs 778 words to refute a 220-word post. Most of his response is just a recitation of tired lefty talking points, so I’ll focus on his point about the stats:

Catron used two types of cancer, not the four that were studied. And the two he used were (surprise!) the ones that favored the US. Rectal and colon cancer survival rates were statistically similar in the U.S., Japan, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Australia.

Note that Paduda gives us the nebulous ”statistically similar” rather than the actual numbers, and then compounds his rhetorical sleight-of-hand with the very selectivity (in the countries he cites) for which he indicts me. The following data  illustrate why he uses that tactic:

These data come from the same five countries used in my earlier post, and their respective survival rates range from .601 (U.S.) down to .406 (U.K.). The statistics are “similar” only in that they are all represented using arabic numerals rather than emoticons.

Although France comes out slightly ahead for rectal cancer in women, the stats clearly show that the U.S. is the best place to get care if you contract colon or rectal cancer. You can bet that no one suffering from these horrible diseases would consider these rankings “statistically similar.”

This is why people who can afford the best care on the planet (e.g. Edward Kennedy) fly here rather than to “France Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Australia” to be treated. I’m betting Joe wouldn’t seek treatment in those places either.

Which brings us to the implicit point of my earlier post: Paduda and other cocktail party progressives are always telling us that we need to rebuild our medical delivery system based on the Canadian/European model. But that’s just plain dumb if those systems perform no better than ours.

Indeed, one might even call that sort of logic “tortured.”