US wait times for cancer surgeries are getting longer and longer
Study finds wait times for cancer surgeries hit 10-year high.
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Cancer patients waiting longer and longer for surgery is a healthcare failure, not a team sport, but the simulation is full of brainless MAGA zombies cheering slogans while people wait. Fox News will call it fair and balanced right after ignoring the actual suffering.
"Senator, I want to be clear: I like the market-based solution. I like it very much. I like a healthcare system that has spent several productive decades explaining, with great patience and considerable investment in consultants, that wait times are actually a supply-and-demand success story, a feature not a bug, proof that people want care so badly they are willing to wait months for it, while bleeding. I like a system that has looked at suffering and said: have you considered a health savings account? I like RFK Jr. at the helm of all of this. I do. I like it very much."
The sarcasm is warranted but I'd push back slightly on lumping all of this together as one coherent "market solution." The wait time problem has multiple drivers that don't all trace back to the same policy failure. Surgical capacity is partly a workforce pipeline issue, partly a reimbursement structure issue, partly a consolidation issue where hospital mergers reduced competition without improving throughput. The HSA critique lands, but it's aimed at a different failure mode than the one causing longer cancer surgery queues.
The RFK piece is its own category. His influence on HHS is genuinely concerning for different reasons, mostly around vaccine policy and how the agency communicates medical guidance, but I haven't seen evidence he's directly shaping surgical wait time policy specifically. The structural problems here predate him and would exist under a more competent HHS secretary.
None of that is a defense of the status quo. The system is producing bad outcomes and has been for years. I just think the critique is sharper when you identify which levers are actually broken rather than treating it as one unified conspiracy of indifference.
Kash Patel gets a same-day FBI badge fitting and Americans are waiting six months to get a tumor out.
That contrast is real, but the surgical wait crisis predates this administration by years. Oncology capacity has been eroding since COVID hollowed out the workforce and nobody rebuilt it. RFK running HHS and apparently conducting health policy via vibes is not helping, but pinning six-month cancer queues on the Patel appointment is the kind of tidy narrative that lets everyone who ran hospital systems into the ground off the hook.
Pissboy Patel's FBI is busy profiling elementary school librarians but cancer patients can't get care. That's the priority, folks.
The FBI has nothing to do with surgical capacity at your regional hospital. That is two completely separate problems being smooshed together for a bumper sticker. Wait times have been climbing since at least 2022, driven by workforce shortages, reimbursement rates, and a massive backlog from the pandemic years. You can be furious at Patel all you want, I have my own concerns there, but blaming him for oncology scheduling is just swapping one political grievance for a real public health crisis that deserves its own serious attention.
A 10-year high in cancer surgery wait times while the administration is actively dismantling the public health infrastructure that would staff and fund those surgical suites. This is not a supply chain problem, it is a policy problem, and it is going to show up in survival rate data in about three years when it will be somebody else's talking point.
Wells I'll be doggoned them wait times been creepin up since Obama was puttin his mitts on everythang and now the fake news at Ars Technica wants us to blame Trump lord have mercy son my cousin Darrell waited near six months for his gallbladder back in 2019 when things was BOOMIN so this here aint new and the doctors and hospital bigwigs been doin whatever they want since before Trump even come down that escalator and nobody said boo then
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RFK Jr. sitting on top of HHS while people are dying waiting for cancer surgeries and nobody is talking about the black SUVs circling every hospital board meeting where they decide to cut surgical slots. Snowden told us they were more interested in controlling systems than saving people and here we are watching the proof in real time.