The article that you link to was written by Betsy McCaughey. She is the person who said that the Health Care Reform legislation supported Death Panels. She brought the legislation onto the Daily Show and then was embarrassed on national television because she couldn’t read the English language. I have no faith that she will be able to read several studies and synthesize the data.

Here are the findings of the study that McCaughey uses as the back bone of her paper (I didn’t buy the whole article for $31!) – “Global variation in cancer survival was very wide. 5-year relative survival for breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer was generally higher in North America, Australia, Japan, and northern, western, and southern Europe, and lower in Algeria, Brazil, and eastern Europe. CONCORD has provided the first opportunity to estimate cancer survival in 11 states in USA covered by the National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR), and the study covers 42% of the US population, four-fold more than previously available. Cancer survival in black men and women was systematically and substantially lower than in white men and women in all 16 states and six metropolitan areas included. Relative survival for all ethnicities combined was 2—4% lower in states covered by NPCR than in areas covered by the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program. Age-standardised relative survival by use of the appropriate race-specific and state-specific life tables was up to 2% lower for breast cancer and up to 5% lower for prostate cancer than with the census-derived national life tables used by the SEER Program. These differences in population coverage and analytical method have both contributed to the survival deficit noted between Europe and the USA, from which only SEER data have been available until now.”

If you are going to compare access, you can look at this Public Health study. Or you can look at folks that the government classifies as poor in a couple of countries (I haven’t seen this study but I’m sure that it is out there). Are their outcomes the same? 

Also, I just saw the American College of Ob/Gyns has just issued reccommendations that women in their 30s only need a pap every 3 years.  (Cue outraged internet response.)  Maybe I can take it to my next appointment.

Here’s the url of the AP story on pap smear reccommendations.  http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/scitech/2009/11/19/D9C32F180_us_med_fewer_pap_smears/index.html

I know that you want to get to the what but if we don’t or can’t analyze the data properly then our conclusions can be and probably will be wrong. 

wouldn’t you agree that we’re doing a much better job of keeping women alive?

You can argue about the WHY, but my point is the WHAT.

Are you comparing apples to apples.  In the US, more women are diagnosed at an early stage. The age at which a woman has her first child will influence the rate of breast cancer. What is the difference in the rates? When you compare breast cancer stage for state is there a difference in mortality?

The Hoover article does not list any references. Where did they get their data from. 

thanks for your comments.

When it comes to mammograms, what this study means is that when I reach my 40s yearly mammograms are much more likely to result in me being misdiagnosed, even unnecessarily operated on, than to save my life.  I’m glad to have that information in making my decision.  The question is, will my doctor or my insurance company respect my choices?

Since you are advocating for a European style health care system to be instituted here, how do you reconcile the poorer performance of countries like the UK when compared to the American system?

I would add that if men got any cancer at the rate of that women get breast cancer, we would already have a cure.