Overseas care no match for U.S.

• Position: Socialized Medicine

It is a myth that government-run health care systems are better oversees. The Canadian, British, and European counterparts delay and ration care for citizens, limiting access to cutting-edge diagnostic services and medications. They spend less by denying services and using age cutoffs to avoid paying bills for the elderly.

Yet, socialized medicine is exactly the model that Washington bureaucrats are proposing for all of us, complains physician Elizabeth Lee Vliet, author of Women, Weight, and Hormones; The Savvy Woman's Guide to PCOS; and Screaming to be Heard: Hormonal Connections Women Suspect--and Doctors Still Ignore, among other books.

U.S. medical services remain the best in the world, Vliet insists. However, she says the country needs to revamp its health system to make private insurance more accessible, competitive in price, and portable--not tied to a job. "Revamping should not mean throwing out the baby with the bath water. Why destroy medical care that is working for 90% of Americans who are satisfied with their health care to fix problems that affect five to 10% of the population?"

The U.S. is tops in innovation, cutting edge diagnostic technology, and effective new medicines, Vliet points out. A study in The Lancet Oncology reveals the following regarding cancer treatment and survival statistics for 16 different types of cancers in Europe and the U.S.:

* The U.S. leads the world in treating breast and prostate cancers.

* Women with breast cancer have a 14% higher survival rate in the U.S. than in Europe.

* Men with prostate cancer have a 28% higher survival rate in the U.S. than in Europe.

* Men in the U.S. have a 66% five-year survival for 16 types of cancer; in Europe, 47%.

* American women...