A November 7 New York Times article on Judith Giuliani's appearance before “an audience of medical professionals and cancer survivors” reported that Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani “has repeatedly criticized Britain's health care system and said that the Democratic candidates were calling for a similar system of 'socialized medicine.' ” While the Times article, by reporter Julie Bosman, noted that "[i]n fact, most of the Democrats say they advocate plans to extend coverage to the uninsured, not plans for government-provided health care," it did not point out that the figures Giuliani has cited to criticize Britain's health-care system -- that his “chance of surviving ... in the United States, 82 percent” but that his “chance of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44 percent under socialized medicine” -- have been disputed. As Media Matters for America has documented (here and here), several media reports have called into question Giuliani's claims, noting that Giuliani was not citing mortality rates, but rather survival rates, which experts including Howard Parnes, chief of the Prostate and Urologic Cancer Research Group at the National Cancer Institute, called, in Parnes' word, “meaningless.” In fact, Bosman herself had reported on the problems with Giuliani's statistics in an October 31 Times article:

The Office for National Statistics in Britain says the five-year survival rate from prostate cancer there is 74.4 percent. And doctors also say it is unfair to compare prostate cancer statistics in Britain with those in the United States because in the United States the cancer is more likely to be diagnosed in its early stages.

“Certainly, if you intensively screen for prostate cancer, you will find early disease,” said Dr. Ian M. Thompson, chairman of the department of urology at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “And simply because you find it earlier, you will always have longer survival after the disease is diagnosed.”

Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for Mr. Giuliani, said yesterday that the 44 percent figure came from an article in City Journal, a publication of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization.

“The citation is an article in a highly respected intellectual journal written by an expert at a highly respected think tank which the mayor read because he is an intellectually engaged human being,” Ms. Comella said in an e-mail message.

That article, titled “The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care,” was written by Dr. David Gratzer, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an adviser to the Giuliani campaign.

In an interview, Dr. Gratzer said the statistic came from the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit group in New York specializing in health care policy issues, but he acknowledged that it was seven years old and “crude.”

But the Commonwealth Fund said yesterday that Dr. Gratzer had misused its research by calculating a five-year survival rate based on data on prostate cancer incidence and mortality rates in the United States and Britain.

“Five-year survival rates cannot be calculated from incidence and mortality rates, as any good epidemiologist knows,” the group said in a statement.

Dr. Gratzer dismissed the Commonwealth Fund's statement, saying the group had “an ideological bias.” Asked if Mr. Giuliani would continue to repeat the statistic, and if the advertisement would continue to run, Ms. Comella responded by e-mail: “Yes. We will.”

As Media Matters noted, Michael Dobbs of The Washington Post wrote in an October 30 Fact Checker post: "[T]he survivability figures tell us little about the differences in the quality of treatment received by prostate cancer patients in the United States and Britain." Dobbs wrote:

“When you introduce screening and early detection into the equation, the survival statistics become meaningless,” said Howard Parnes, chief of the Prostate Cancer Research Group at the National Cancer Institute. “You are identifying many people who would not otherwise be diagnosed.”

Another way of comparing treatment of prostate cancer in the U.S. and Britain is to look at the mortality rates from the disease. Here the two countries are much closer. The graph below shows deaths per 100,000 males in each country. About 25 men out of 100,000 are dying from prostate cancer every year in both the U.K. and the U.S.

From Bosman's November 7 article in The New York Times:

At a breast cancer forum here, she [Judith Giuliani] pledged that a Giuliani administration would provide resources and support for people with cancer.

[...]

Elizabeth Kucinich, the British-born wife of a Democratic presidential candidate, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, was also at the forum.

Wearing a long pink coat that matched the ribbons worn by many breast-cancer survivors in the room, Mrs. Kucinich spoke about Britain's health care system.

“We really have an affordable health care system, and I don't see why America is afflicted with a system where we have insurance companies in business who make money not providing health care,” Mrs. Kucinich said, as the audience broke into loud applause.

Mr. Giuliani has repeatedly criticized Britain's health care system and said that the Democratic candidates were calling for a similar system of “socialized medicine.” (In fact, most of the Democrats say they advocate plans to extend coverage to the uninsured, not plans for government-provided health care.)

Mrs. Giuliani had already left by the time Mrs. Kucinich spoke.

Nancy Bardsley, a breast cancer survivor at the forum, said she was impressed by Mrs. Giuliani and planned to vote for her husband.

“She seems very nice, very driven, very intelligent,” Ms. Bardsley said. “I think she should make more speeches.”