If I have cancer in the US, my average survival rate is 65-70%. In the UK NHS, to use that as an example, it is 45%
Do you have any links to studies that show this? The 20% gap seems extreme.
better diagnostics, treatments, and options in the US
It's really hard for me to believe that the US has better treatments than other 1st world countries which would result in 20%-30% decrease in mortality across the board. Once again I'd like to see some evidence.
I could maybe understand if the US had much higher rates of testing which in turn resulted in higher rates of survivability.
Many of these claims seem grossly over inflated. I'd be interested to see where you got the figures from.
The statistics actually come from the esteemed British medical journal Lancet. Google it; the over-performance of the US across a broad swath of cancers in that study attracted a lot of attention.
As for why the US has better treatments, depending on how you measure it, 70-80% of all new biomedical R&D globally is done in the US. Consequently, if there is a new biomedical technology, it shows up in the US system first where they can capture the R&D investment. Most of the rest of the R&D is done in Asia.
You are correct about one thing: the US has extremely high levels of diagnostic testing compared to the rest of the developed world. It is both part of the cost and also why survival rates are higher for many diseases. The survival rates are not just better treatments, it is also earlier diagnosis by virtue of heavy use of (expensive) diagnostic tests.
Do you have any links to studies that show this? The 20% gap seems extreme.
better diagnostics, treatments, and options in the US
It's really hard for me to believe that the US has better treatments than other 1st world countries which would result in 20%-30% decrease in mortality across the board. Once again I'd like to see some evidence.
I could maybe understand if the US had much higher rates of testing which in turn resulted in higher rates of survivability.
Many of these claims seem grossly over inflated. I'd be interested to see where you got the figures from.