One of the statistics you hear a lot of from supporters of universal healthcare is that it would save 40,000 lives per year. But the study that came up with this figure assumes that by providing universal healthcare everyone would be brought up to the standards of care we have today in America.
But is that realistic? What we know is that in Europe where there is universal healthcare there is also a lot of cost containment measures that make the quality of care in Europe less than America. In 2004 Europeans saw 2.9 million cases of cancers with 1.7 million deaths. That same year in the USA we had 1.37 million cases of cancer and 563 thousand deaths.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14974761 US Stats
http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/3/481.full Europe Stats
The rate of cancer mortality in the USA was 41% while in Europe it was 58.6%. The difference between these two numbers means 237,000 Americans survived that would have died with European style universal healthcare.
What we are looking at is not saving 40,000 lives, but condemning an additional 237,000 Americans to death each year.
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Wouldn't you add 40000 to the 237000 to see the disparity between what the President says and what will in reality happen? so really 277000 more deaths.
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