In the short press conference this morning, Giuliani was asked about the controversy surrounding a recent radio ad in which he said his chances of surviving prostate cancer were twice what they were in the U.S. than if he were in England. The claim has had the New York Times and liberal blogs such as Talking Points Memo in a tizzy. The numbers Giuliani cited were 82 percent to 44 percent, which came from a City Journal article. One of the criticisms was that Giuliani used highly out of date numbers from 7 years ago.

This morning Giuliani said the numbers were accurate and he’s sticking with them, because he had prostate cancer in 2000, so that would be an accurate reflection of his own survival chances when he had prostate cancer. Today, he said, the numbers were closer to 98-99 percent in the U.S. and 74 percent in England, but that still doesn’t change his overall point about the superiority of free market health care. And, in typical Giuliani fashion, he ended the exchange by going on the offensive against the reporter who asked the question. “You find me a person with prostate cancer who wants to to leave the United States to go to England for treatment,” he challenged. “I’d like to meet that person.”