Private Health Care Still Working
Well, that is, if you assume that, when a patient gets something like cancer, the best Health Care system will be the one that keeps the most patients alive. Which, if I may say so, seems a pretty fair assumption to make.
Here's the link.
The important info is in the table on the right side, which shows the survival rates of all cancer patients in European Countries by gender. For good measure, they threw in the United States' rates and, unsurprisingly, they were the highest rates for both males and females. The margin was much smaller for females than it was for males, but I'm guessing the Americans who make up that slightly-more-than 1% edge in female survival rates would caution you against calling that percentage insignificant.
Moreover, if you were to go by the numbers, you might say that there are some things that those in Universal Health Care paradises could learn from us - things such as, you know, how to better cure their patients - but, fortunately for Europeans, a good socialist doesn't have to let facts and figures get in his way.
One other thing to note is that this study, done by The Lancet, calculates the survival rate based on how many of a Nation's cancer patients have survived their cancer 5 years after their diagnosis (with the research being done between 2000-2002). When one expands the research beyond that 5-year period, and looks at the ultimate mortality rates from cancer diagnoses, the United States puts a great deal more distance between itself and many of its, more Socialistic, competitors. At least, that is insofar as some of the most common types of cancer are concerned.
(Indeed, the article I linked to above doesn't quite do the United States' advantage in some areas of the 5-year study justice, for a better look at the numbers click here)
At the end of the day, of course, irrespective of the margin or time frame, the lesson to be learned remains the same: American Health Care does a better job of curing cancer than its European counterpart - despite being less socialized in its nature.
This is not a coincidence.