"Cancer and the Government" by Michael D. Tanner (Cato Institute: Commentary)

"Cancer and the Government" by Michael D. Tanner (Cato Institute: Commentary): "The overall five-year survival rate for all types of cancer for men in America is 66.3 percent, and 62.9 percent for women, the best outcome in the world.

We shouldn't be surprised. The one common characteristic of all national health-care systems is that they ration care."

"With the creation of NICE, the U.K. government has effectively put a dollar amount to how much a citizen's life is worth. To be exact, each year of added life is worth approximately $44,305 (£30,000)."

"The advantages of free-market health care go far beyond an absence of rationing. With no price controls, free-market U.S. medicine provides the incentives that lead to innovative breakthroughs in new drugs and other medical technologies. U.S. companies have developed half of all the major new medicines introduced worldwide over the last 20 years.

In fact, Americans played a key role in 80 percent of the most important medical advances of the last 30 years. Eighteen of the last 25 winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine either are U.S. citizens or work here.

If the American Cancer Society got the government-run national health-care system it wants, we would eliminate consumer choice and put a stop to the innovations we count on to improve our health. It would condemn thousands of cancer sufferers to waiting lists and denied care. In the end, it would cost lives."