at it again, newt?

• Newt Gingrich on "Face the Nation" June 7, 2009:

It's just the first step towards a national health system. I mean, they will absolutely use that model to get to a -- to destroy all the insurance companies and get to a national health system.
...
No, I think -- but I think when the average American looks at the idea that we're going to have a government bureaucrat decide whether you get, or your daughter, or your granddaughter gets the treatment you need, if you look at the death rate from breast cancer in Great Britain and the death rate from breast cancer here, I don't think that's a model we're going to accept.

• from his online bio:

1996 Georgia Breast Cancer Coalition Honoree

• CNN, 3/9/07:

Former House speaker and potential presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has confessed, telling conservative Christian leader James Dobson that he was cheating on his wife at around the same time the House was impeaching President Bill Clinton over his White House affair with Monica Lewinsky.
...
Gingrich's first marriage ended after he discussed the details of the divorce with his wife while she was recovering from cancer surgery. He married again in 1981 and was divorced in 2000, when he married the young congressional aide with whom he had the affair.

ok, nuff smear. (i couldn't resist all the links that came up when i searched for "gingrich breast cancer.")

here are countries with lower breast cancer death rates than the US:

China, Zimbabwe, India, Japan, Brazil, Singapore, Italy, Australia, Sweden.

but we should note that it's more complex than that. the UK may have a higher death rate for that particular kind of cancer, but its overall cancer death rate is lower than ours, while its breast cancer incidence is higher.

i'm not going to do the math, but at a glance it appears britain has roughly the same success as we do at saving lives of women with breast cancer. i haven't checked the incidence of other types, so i won't jump to conclusions about them. if you're interested, be my guest.

of course, it's impossible for me to say whether newt is intentionally distorting the implications of the stats (using frank luntz's suggested language?) or if he simply doesn't know what he's talking about.