USC is a private institution and not part of the state system. UCLA is one of the top ccc's in the US. Go to the resources page on the main web site and look at the link that says best hospitals. This is an independent report issued each year that lists the top 50 in order of best to worst on many criteria. UCLA is very near the top. There are hundreds more that do not even make the list.

Your reasoning is wrong in some of this. Just because a lesion is not visible to the naked eye in a throat scope does not mean it does not exist more deeply in the tissues. Scans of different types look for different things, some scans are better at soft tissues, some better at masses, some better at hard tissues, some look at things at a cellular level, independent of the type of tissue. Having cancer of any stage and stating that you think that going to a lesser hospital than one with a cancer center as an integral part of it is OK, makes no sense. It is the training and experience of the doctors that will make a difference in life and death and not equipment. The best docs are at the best facilities; they are in demand and can pick and choose where they wish to work. A casual attitude about who treats you and how seems incongruous with a diagnosis of a disease, that given the right set of genes in you, can run like wildfire or not, and certainly takes too many lives every year regardless of the stage it is diagnosed at.