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Cancer survival rates

Record spending on cancer services has failed to improve survival rates significantly, a study covering two million patients suggests.

Just a thought here. Perhaps even just the embryo of a thought.

Perhaps the important thing is not how much money is spent on a specific activity or problem but how money is spent on a specific activity or problem?

If pumping money into state schools doesn\’t improve them then perhaps it\’s the structure or management of state schools that is the problem, not the amount of money? If pumping money into the NHS to improve cancer care does nothing very much to improve cancer care then perhaps it\’s the structure or management of the NHS that is the problem, not the amount of money?

As I say, only a thought.

4 thoughts on “Cancer survival rates”

  1. Hmm. The problems are structural not financial. That’s just crazy talk!
    The problem is politicians sit on the apex of this structure so where is their incentive to change it? Whereas spending other peoples money is a much easier way to show that you care.

  2. Well in the main they haven’t been spending money. If I spend money I expect something in return. What they have been doing is giving money away.

  3. 1) Observe the advantage of the “post code lottery”: the fact that the Welsh system is different provided useful info.
    2) It’s certainly odd, because you’d expect to be able to extend “survival” without doing any good at all, just by making the diagnoses earlier; no need for successful treatment at all.

  4. I have read, on several occasions, dramatic
    emphsis of dearieme’s sdecond contention. In the matter of breast cancer survival rates, some
    maintain (in contrast to the public service-type
    announcements) that the trend toward earlier and earlier screening is, by itself, the cause of almost all of the apparent lengthenings of average survival rate and rise in percentages of those surviving 5 years beyond diagnosis.

    I don’t know where the truth of the matter lies. But people do deserve to be frankly and fully informed on such matters.

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