Mintball wrote:
A recent report on cancer care shows that the coalition have, in fact, been telling porkies about the NHS needing to improve because of cancer care – well, either that or they really are clueless on even some basic factoids.
This was IMO the most tasteless part of the propaganda campaign to argue for the Coalition's healthcare reforms. The argument was always "the UK is behind various European and outside countries for cancer survival rates - we HAVE to do something about the NHS, we can't go on like this, we owe it to cancer patients and their relatives". This is an emotive argument because most people have had some form of experience with cancer in their family.
What should have been done then is a concentrated drive on cancer treatment and looking at the countries that have been using more successful cancer treatments and seeing if we can get best practice from them. But instead its a wholesale reorganisation of the whole NHS, including large scale commissioning of services from private providers, that is opposed by doctors! What happened to the part about improving cancer care?
It is just using a completely irrelevant argument which IMO is tasteless.