Wow you guys should try being a little nicer to each other!   See 4 other replies

Bobby. You are a moron. 559, 888 Americans died from cancer in 2006. That is not the number of deaths AND diagnoses. The figure that Milken referred to pertains to the life time risks that an individual will develop OR die of cancer. Based on the number given above, if you live to be 70 years old (average life expectancy was probably used in govt. calculations) over 39 million people in the US will die of cancer during your lifetime. After that you will have to included the people who are diagnosed with cancer but survive during the course of your lifetime to have number that fits Milken's statement. (Read below) As they used to say in my old neighborhood when I was a boy, "Talk what you know!" "Based on rates from 2004-2006, 40.58% of men and women born today will be diagnosed with cancer of all sites at some time during their lifetime. This number can also be expressed as 1 in 2 men and women will be diagnosed with cancer of all sites during their lifetime. These statistics are called the lifetime risk. The probability of developing cancer in the course of one's lifespan."
http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html   See 4 other replies

Wow - by your ignorant reply I assume you can neither read for comprehension nor do simple arithmetic.... Sigh - let me walk you through this since you are unable to do it with your obviously meager intellect...There are about 300 MILLION AMERICANS!50% of 300 MILLION is what?! It isn't 559, 888!! Dou che...And by the way, the site you call "...misleading double-speak..." is a WHITE-PAPER from the AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY! If you even read it - which you clearly didn't - you would've seen in the first paragraph that these statistics use the most up-to-date CDC number AS WELL AS numbers from the National Cancer Institute, AND the National Center for Health Statistics!!Steve Greska is a fool.   See 4 other replies

I agree, I thought I did know quite a bit about the topic and legislation but this really made clear the level of complexity of the issue. There were supported arguments for at least four reasons that we pay more for worse care than we should. At least one of which, like you said, is not something we can legislate around - my lifestyle is reasonably healthy but I'll admit that this made me want to improve it and remind my friends to do the same.
Not much TV content knocks my socks off these days. I think that some of the panel had too much of an agenda of course but this was still one of the most informative and gripping pieces of content I've seen from a news channel in a very long time.
CNBC - more of this PLEASE!   See 1 other reply

How about you stop linking misleading double speak? From CDC for 2006:
Leading Causes of Death
(Data are for the U.S.)
Number of deaths for leading causes of death
* Heart disease: 631,636
* Cancer: 559,888
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
* Diabetes: 72,449
* Alzheimer's disease: 72,432
* Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344
* Septicemia: 34,234   See 4 other replies