Piling On the NHS

More on the glorious, flawless British National Health Service. As you-know-who recently said, Britons that the patronize the public system get top-notch care and a free Pimms Cup with every visit: "Now, the British system is really government-owned, in the sense that the government owns and runs the hospitals, the government employs the doctors. And so, they work for the government, so it's very much a government-owned and -run and -controlled program in Britain. And again, you know, everything is free. And you see the hospitals in the film. People are very happy with it."

Except, the Telegraph reports, those diagnosed with cancer:

Cancer survival rates in Britain are among the lowest in Europe, according to the most comprehensive analysis of the issue yet produced.

England is on a par with Poland despite the NHS spending three times more on health care.

Survival rates are based on the number of patients who are alive five years after diagnosis and researchers found that, for women, England was the fifth worst in a league of 22 countries. Scotland came bottom. Cancer experts blamed late diagnosis and long waiting lists.

In total, 52.7pc of women survived for five years after being diagnosed between 2000 and 2002. Only Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Czech Republic and Poland did worse. Just 44.8pc of men survived, putting England in the bottom seven countries.

Full story here.

Also from the Telegraph: nurses face joblessness by NHS budget squeeze; the elderly are "becoming increasingly disabled because of a lack of basic care to help them look after their feet"; list of hospitals threatened with closure in budget cutbacks; and NHS dentists are often more expensive than their private counterparts.