Comment by grues-dinner

Leaving aside that the article is about the EU and largely says less about where is better to have cancer and more about where you're statistically more likely to be an old smoker and get cancer, it says it's better to have cancer in the US when you're over 65 and therefore get the socialised healthcare.

Get cancer aged 25 and you may be in some trouble.

As long as you can get past your GP and actually get the diagnosis the system works pretty well. Get onto the Two Week Wait, and you automatically will if your diagnostic test is positive or falls into the needs further investigation category, and that's highly competitive with, say American time to intervention: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6396925

The typical UK "horror story" fuck-up is your GP fobs you off over and over until you turn up in (overwhelmed due to people who can't get GP or social care) A&E with advanced and now-incurable cancer, they scan you, say "why the fuck haven't you been referred months ago that's atrocious", and then you die. GPs are all private in the UK and get charged more when they refer to hospitals. Either it's a traditional small partnership where the GPs themselves are invested or it's a kind of consultancy where a company employs GPs on contract and puts pressure on them to improve returns/cut costs. Either way, that's where the profit incentive comes in and coincidentally, this area is what kills people.

The GPs aren't themselves at fault mostly, they also need more funding and staff, but both have been cut drastically. I am, however, deeply suspicious that companies cut from the same cloth as Serco, Capita and G4S will not have patient outcomes anywhere in mind except under "cost centre".