Here's another couple of reports that should cause Democrats in the United States to strongly reconsider their infatuation with government-run "universal health care." The first is a story in the Daily Mail (U.K.) explaining that:Half the population has received no dental care on the NHS in the last two years. And thousands of suffering patients are turning up at hospital emergency departments for treatment because they cannot find an NHS dentist.
Shocking figures seen by the Daily Mail suggest there have been 27,000 more hospital admissions since the Government bungled the introduction of a new contract for dentists.
Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley said: "We know that there are people out there who are pulling out their own teeth because they can't find a NHS dentist."
And the second story, coming from the Independent (U.K.) deals with the dramatic decline in U.S. deaths from prostate cancer (the most common form of cancer in men) vis a vis the death rate in Great Britain.
Deaths from the disease have declined four times faster in the US than in the UK over the past decade, having peaked in both countries in the early 1990s at almost identical rates. Specialists claim that a combination of screening for early detection of the disease combined with more aggressive treatment is the secret of the US success...
A key difference between the countries lies in the extent of screening with the PSA (prostate specific antigen) blood test. More than half (57 per cent) of men over 50 reported being screened in the past 12 months, compared with 6 per cent in the UK.
In addition, treatment in the US is more aggressive, with a higher use of radical surgery, radiotherapy and hormone treatment...
