What Obama Isn’t Saying About Breast Cancer Successes in America

By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D.
posted Sept. 23, 2009

Excerpt:
My friend who lives in England had the following to say regarding her experience with breast cancer:

“We don’t start providing mammograms until a woman is 50, and then only every 3 years. Now that I am a [breast cancer] statistic, I am having them every 2 years, but that is still not brilliant – a lot can happen in 2 years. Then when they thought I might have cancer spreading to my bowel, I was told it would be 4 or 5 months before I could get the urgent endoscopy and colonoscopy.”

Consider this:
* The United States leads the world in treating breast cancer.
* Women with breast cancer have a 14% higher survival rate in the United States than in Europe.
* Five cancers – breast, prostate, thyroid, testicular and melanoma skin cancer –have 90% or higher survival rates in the United States. Only ONE cancer – testicular – has a 90% or better survival rate in Europe.

As a small business owner, I’d be the first to admit that American health insurance options need to be reformed to increase availability and affordability. I have limited health insurance options for me and my employees, and the premiums keep going up very year even without many claims.

Our current system needs to be revamped to emphasize prevention, reduce costs, and to expand insurance coverage. This can be done with changes in existing state and federal regulations, without a government take over of the entire health care system.

What President Obama fails to point out, though, is that the United States leads the world in innovation to provide diagnostic technology and effective new medicines to manage and cure more diseases than ever before. the rest