A paper from Samuel Preston and Jessica Ho delves into this:
- “The US appears to screen more vigorously for cancer than Europe and people in the US who are diagnosed with cancer have higher 5-year survival probabilities.”
- There is a similar, though not quite as strong, pattern with cardiovascular disease — it is treated more aggressively on average in the U.S., and survival odds are better.
- A detailed survey of prostate cancer evidence shows that “The combination of earlier detection and aggressive treatment in the US has produced greatly improved survival chances for men diagnosed with prostate cancer.”
- Similarly for breast cancer, America does more early screening and more aggressive treatment with the result that “the US has experienced a significantly faster decline in breast cancer mortality than comparison countries.”
HT: Matt Yglesias