patrick.net

Treating breast cancer in 70-year olds? I would imagine they are as likely to die from the treatment or its side effects as the disease. Chemotherapy ain't fsckin' nice. Keeping your head in a bucket 24 hours a day whilst vomiting all the time. Then there is the problem of dealing with damaged immune systems.

dublin hillz says

health insurance companies denying coverage is a defacto death panel in itself

Bingo.

It has always shocked me that more people don't make this connection.

Lam says

Treating breast cancer in 70-year olds? I would imagine they are as likely to die from the treatment or its side effects as the disease. Chemotherapy ain't fsckin' nice. Keeping your head in a bucket 24 hours a day whilst vomiting all the time. Then there is the problem of dealing with damaged immune systems.

It should be up to the elderly to decide whether they want to undergo the "horrors" of chemo. I would imagine that the dillema of this vs the almost certain death as a result of doing nothing will tilt the risk/reward ratio towards chemo. Ultimately, the British goverment denying treatment via its NHS branch is effectively sentencing people to death and such a decision is anything but moral. The government should not have such absolute power. And besides, I kinda doubt that queen elizabeth would end up in such sitiation...

dublin hillz says

It should be up to the elderly to decide whether they want to undergo the "horrors" of chemo. I would imagine that the dillema of this vs the almost certain death as a result of doing nothing will tilt the risk/reward ratio towards chemo. Ultimately, the British goverment denying treatment via its NHS branch is effectively sentencing people to death and such a decision is anything but moral. The government should not have such absolute power. And besides, I kinda doubt that queen elizabeth would end up in such sitiation...

It should be up to the elderly to decide whether they want to undergo the "horrors" of chemo. I would imagine that the dillema of this vs the almost certain death as a result of doing nothing will tilt the risk/reward ratio towards chemo. Ultimately, the British goverment health insurance companies denying treatment via its NHS branch claims adjusters is effectively sentencing people to death and such a decision is anything but moral. The government insurance companies should not have such absolute power. And besides, I kinda doubt that queen elizabeth the CEO would end up in such sitiation...

When they looked closely at the mammogram history of 2,131 elderly women with severe cognitive impairment, the research team found nearly 20 percent received mammograms (compared to 45 percent of women with normal mental status) -- even though these women were unlikely to live three more years and mammograms are not indicated for women with a life expectancy of five years or less. However, the rate of mammograms ordered for elderly women with severe dementia went up dramatically if they were married and the couple still had tens of thousands of dollars in assets. In fact, the rate of unnecessary screening mammography for seriously cognitively impaired women soared to nearly 50 percent if they were still married and the couple's net worth was $100,000 or more.

http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2010/01/4345/cognitively-impaired-elderly-women-get-unneeded-screening-mammography-study

Lam says

Treating breast cancer in 70-year olds? I would imagine they are as likely to die from the treatment or its side effects as the disease. Chemotherapy ain't fsckin' nice. Keeping your head in a bucket 24 hours a day whilst vomiting all the time. Then there is the problem of dealing with damaged immune systems.

KarlRoveIsScum says

Good luck living in Britain.

20% VAT!

over 400 pounds a month utilities on a 2 bed 800sqft apartment

Gas is how much !!!! Very very expensive! 1.50 per LITRE!

Live longer and have much much less

£400 a month for utilities? You're having a laugh. The average UK bill in 2012 for gas and electricity combined was £1342 a year.

I would rather die naturally a year early, than to die a year later, by her majesties geezer firing squad.

Another feature in Britain: much more likely to make diagnosis on a detailed history rather than wait for pathology report/radiologist report, which is the norm for many doctors, presumably a side effect of practicing defensive medicine...........

..............On another note: According to Canadian columnist Dr. W. Gifford -Jones, women between the ages of 40 and 49 who have regular mammograms are twice as likely to die from breast cancer as women who are not screened.

"Experts say you have to screen 2,000 women for 10 years for one benefit," he wrote recently.

Gifford-Jones also points to other risks, from the physical to the psychological. According to some authorities, the squeezing of women's breasts during mammograms may rupture blood vessels, causing cancer to spread to other parts of the body and actually increasing a patient's risk of death.

He also pointed to the trauma suffered by women who receive false positives from their mammograms, and to the dangerous sense of security felt by those who receive false negatives.

Studies show that mammograms fail to detect cancer 30 percent of the time in women aged 40 to 49. In addition, it can take eight years before a breast tumor is large enough to detect, by which time the cancer could have spread to other parts of the body.

CaptainShuddup says

I would rather die naturally a year early, than to die a year later, by her majesties geezer firing squad.

More blather. How many of your fellow citizens have had no proper health coverage during your life time?

The results showed that breast cancer deaths declined by 1% in women between the ages of 55 and 74 in the areas where regular mammography was frequently used. However, breast cancer rates went down more -- 2% per year -- in women of the same age living in non-screened areas. And this trend was the same in younger women, too. For those between the ages of 35 and 54, breast cancer mortality went down by 5% per year in the screened areas but it went down more, 6% per year, in the non-screened areas during the same time frame.

The researchers noted that there's no evidence that the drops in cancer deaths in the women screened for breast cancer had anything to do directly with mammograms, either. "We were unable to find an effect of the Danish screening program on breast cancer mortality," the researchers concluded in their study, which was just published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). "The reductions in breast cancer mortality we observed in screening regions were similar or less than those in non-screened areas and in younger age groups, and are more likely explained by changes in risk factors and improved treatment than by screening mammography."

The BMJ study also noted that for women in the oldest age group (75-84 years), there was virtually no breast cancer mortality difference between those who were in areas where breast screening was pushed on the public and in non-screened areas

Two members of the same Danish research team that published the BMJ study also published an additional paper in the March edition of the Polish medical journal Polskie Archiwum Medycyny Wewnetrznej (Pol Arch Med Wewn). It directly addressed the balance between the supposed benefits and known harms of cancer screening programs. "By attending screening with mammography some women will avoid dying from breast cancer or receive less aggressive treatment. But many more women will be over-diagnosed, receive needless treatment, have a false-positive result, or live more years as a patient with breast cancer," they concluded.

The Danish research team looked at annual changes in breast cancer deaths in two Danish regions where breast cancer screening programs were offered to the public and compared this to data collected in non-screened regions throughout the rest of the country. To get a broad picture of the trend toward more or less breast cancer mortality, they analyzed breast malignancy rates in the decade before the screening was started and also looked at the ten years after screening was introduced.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20332715
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20332505

Life expectancy is a shitty metric for quality of health care.

errc says

Life expectancy is a shitty metric for quality of health care.

It certainly is inadequate. However, any good metric should include life expectancy as a component.

So what? It's their money, they earned it.
If they want to squeeze out a couple more weeks watchin Rachel Maddow...that's their prerogative...

MMR says

When they looked closely at the mammogram history of 2,131 elderly women with severe cognitive impairment, the research team found nearly 20 percent received mammograms (compared to 45 percent of women with normal mental status) -- even though these women were unlikely to live three more years and mammograms are not indicated for women with a life expectancy of five years or less. However, the rate of mammograms ordered for elderly women with severe dementia went up dramatically if they were married and the couple still had tens of thousands of dollars in assets. In fact, the rate of unnecessary screening mammography for seriously cognitively impaired women soared to nearly 50 percent if they were still married and the couple's net worth was $100,000 or more.

Dan8267 says

errc says

Life expectancy is a shitty metric for quality of health care.

It certainly is inadequate. However, any good metric should include life expectancy as a component.

True.

You could also look at infant mortality. The US ranks bellow the UK in that as well. In fact the infant mortality in the US is higher than most of the developed world.

MMR says

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20332715

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20332505

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19920273

Yet here is a different study on the same page that says screening is beneficial. Which is right?

Why are you using MMR instead of curious now?

KarlRoveIsScum says

Good luck living in Britain.

20% VAT!

over 400 pounds a month utilities on a 2 bed 800sqft apartment

Gas is how much !!!! Very very expensive! 1.50 per LITRE!

Live longer and have much much less

400 quid a month? You're having a laugh. The average UK bill for gas and electricity combined was 1342 a year.

KarlRoveIsScum says

Nope.

I said all utilities Gas, Electric, Water

it's now about 400 pound a month!

2bed , 2ba 800sqft in Suburbs on London

Absolute nonsense. Are you seriously trying to claim that all other UTILITY bills in addition to gas and electricity amount to a near additional 300 quid a month?! Rubbish. The average water and sewerage rates in the UK are £376 a year. That makes the average household bill in the UK for gas, electricity, water and sewerage about £143 a month. What other utility bills would you like me to add so that we can reach your ridiculous £400 a month claim? And your sliding in of the additional 'suburbs on (sic) London' doesn't change that. The price differences in the SE aren't that great from the rest of the country when it comes to utilities (Thames Water's average bill is actually lower than many other regions for example), and that's not even mentioning you using a very small property as your example.

KarlRoveIsScum says

Bigsby says

CaptainShuddup says

I would rather die naturally a year early, than to die a year later, by her majesties geezer firing squad.

More blather. How many of your fellow citizens have had no proper health coverage during your life time?

What an fuckwit Cpt Bigot is

And you two ASSHOLES problem with what I stated is exactly what?

Hussein any comment coming from you, is a "Consider the source" situation. You calling ANYONE names, is rich.

Bigsby says

More blather. How many of your fellow citizens have had no proper health coverage during your life time?

Hey I have health coverage that I pay fucking DEARLY for "thanks Nancy and Obama for making permiums 50% more than when you took office"

How ever, I hardly have "proper health coverage".

CaptainShuddup says

Bigsby says

More blather. How many of your fellow citizens have had no proper health coverage during your life time?

Hey I have health coverage that I pay fucking DEARLY for "thanks Nancy and Obama for making permiums 50% more than when you took office"

How ever, I hardly have "proper health coverage".

And the point of that post was what exactly? That you don't give a fuck about anybody else in your country?

CaptainShuddup says

And you two ASSHOLES problem with what I stated is exactly what?

Hussein any comment coming from you, is a "Consider the source" situation. You calling ANYONE names, is rich.

Mainly that it made absolutely no sense, pretty much like everything you post.

Oh! You're from California, never mind.

I don't argue with the minibus crowd.

No disrespect to the retards of course.

CaptainShuddup says

Oh! You're from California, never mind.

I don't argue with the minibus crowd.

No disrespect to the retards of course.

You just can't help being wrong all the time, can you?

KarlRoveIsScum says

Bigsby says

average household bill in the UK for gas, electricity, water and sewerage about £143 a month.

who was talking averages except you?

This is what it is costing many people in N.London, nearly 400 pound a month.

No, it isn't. You picked as your example a small property (smaller than average). I just posted that London prices are actually cheaper than many other areas for water and sewerage, and the regional variations in gas and electricity are pretty trivial. You have just made up your info, and added London later in a misguided effort to try and make your figures seem more plausible. If the UK average is £143, then how exactly does a small property (a small property that has suddenly become located in London) run up a bill of £400 when the cost of utilities is little different to anywhere else in the country? Seriously, is it that difficult to admit your number is completely wrong?

CaptainShuddup says

I would rather die naturally a year early, than to die a year later, by her
majesties geezer firing squad.

That's some theory. Your delusional and paranoia thoughts of some ficticious "death panel' is why you'll show them and refuse treatment and die.

For the sake of your own safety, please don't try to persuade everybody of how safe that you think firearms are, because you don't need to shoot off your own feet to prove your point.