U.S. actress reveals cancer diagnosis, calls for universal health care

by WorldTribune Staff, September 29, 2017

In announcing via Twitter that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, American actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus said universal health care should be “a reality” in the United States.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus

The 56-year-old star of HBO’s Veep and former Seinfeld cast member tweeted, “1 in 8 women get breast cancer. Today, I’m the one. The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union. The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let’s fight all cancers and make universal health care a reality.”

The Left often points to the UK as the pinnacle of universal health care, but data from Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) show women with breast cancer in free market systems are likely far luckier than those in countries with universal health care.

“Universal health care is not the panacea in the UK that Hollywood elites wish on United States citizens,” Dr. Susan Berry wrote for Breitbart on Sept. 28.

In a 2013 report for Forbes, Dr. Scott Atlas – a former Professor and Chief of Neuroradiology from 1998 until 2012 at Stanford University Medical Center – noted, “[T]he problems of the NHS are severe, notorious, and increasingly scandalous in the most fundamental attributes of any health care system: access and quality.”

“For cancer,” Atlas wrote, “American patients, both men and women, have superior survival rates for all major types. For some specifics, per Verdecchia in Lancet Oncology, the breast cancer mortality rate is 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom than in the U.S.; prostate cancer mortality rates are strikingly worse in the UK than in the U.S.; mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher than in the U.S.”

Atlas continued: “Reality also prevents accepting the fantasy that the NHS-style socialized medicine as initiated in 1948 has actually lived up to the so-called ‘core value’ of British society. For if true, it must seem odd that people of means in Britain consistently look elsewhere for medical care. About six million Brits now buy private health insurance, including almost two-thirds of Brits earning more than $78,700.”


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