Talking out of his…
Former New York mayor and US Republican presidential ‘hopeful’ Rudy Giuliani’s been in town and dissing the NHS.
Speaking at an event at a London hotel, he said: “Healthcare right now in America - and I think it has been true of your experience of socialised medicine in England - is not only very expensive, it’s increasingly less effective.
“I had prostate cancer seven years. My chance of survival in the US is 82%; my chance of survival if I was here in England is below 50%.
I think he probably ‘misspoke‘. What he, of course, meant was:
A prominent politician’s chance of survival in the US is 82%…
I’d be interested to see, to pluck an example at random, the survival rates of black men from New Orleans having no medical insurance. It’s a question of who you are, I would say.
A bit like having a dodgy ticker over here. One imagines that if Gordon Brown were to wake up this morning with a prostate gland the size of a grapefruit, his chance of survival would be considerably greater than 50%.
Posted on September 20th, 2007 at 8:21 am
| See also • Trevor Phillips is anti-American • The all new PMQs • Like tiny insects in the palm of history |
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Filed under Miscellaneous misanthropy, UK politics, US Politics |
I think thats why the Michael Moore film put a lot of people in America off the British system. It made it seem like you couldn’t get better care than everyone else if you were rich.
By the way I think you’ll find it’s spelt ‘9/11Rudy9/11Giuliani9/11′.
Dr Phil Hammond says, ‘the NHS, much admired around the world, but never copied’.
He is just plain wrong. He was diagnosed at age 54. The survival rate (5 years) for men diagnosed between the ages of 50 - 59 in the UK and USA is almost identical, (around 80%)
Source.
Ah, Rudy ‘misspeaks’ again.
Cancer survival rate stats are a minefield. The NHS ones aren’t actually all that good, even when compared to other European systems. But prostate cancer is a very bad comparison to use.
Most men who get it (and a very large percentage do) do not die of it: they live long enough to die of something else.
The real driver of the stats for prostate cancer survival (and some other cancers too) is in the detection rate: or rather, the earlier a cancer is deteced, then the longer people live after detection.
The US has very good prostate cancer screening (many would say actually that it’s too good), thus their survival rate is higher.
Now, it’s entirely another question whether their screening system is efficient or not.
Rudy Giuliani or Vampire Ghouliani?
What an arrogant Yankee bastard!
It just goes to show how even with a change of PM the yanks still think we are the 51st state.
It just goes to show how even with a change of PM the yanks still think we are the 51st state.
If we’d stop acting as though we wanted nothing else quite so much, maybe they’d stop thinking that.