From what I have seen about the UK system it is very much based on a cost-benefit tradeoff for treatments. Basically they do all the treatments that fit in the

From what I have seen about the UK system it is very much based on a cost-benefit tradeoff for treatments. Basically they do all the treatments that fit in the budget ordered by how many extra years of life expectancy each will add on average to the patient. Other countries have much less rational ways of going about it so it may very well be that on the specific case of cancer they are bellow standard just because the standard is irrationally high. Statistics about life expectancy at birth put them at number 25 slightly above the EU average and the US. They are still bellow a bunch of other European countries and of course life expectancy is a function of more than the health service itself but also the habits of the population in terms of diet, exercise, etc. Edit: According to this (random google search): http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dea_fro_can-health-death-from-cancer http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_dea_fro_can-health-dea... The UK actually beats the US and most of Europe on the number of actual cancer deaths. So either its healthcare or its eating/exercise habits is doing enough about cancer prevention to make them perform well on general survival. Maybe they do perform badly once you have cancer though.