mammogram guidelines questioned by experts

[dgriffin]

Experts question motives of mammogram guidelines


By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Cancer experts fear new U.S. breast imaging guidelines that recommend against routine screening mammograms for women in their 40s may have their roots in the current drive in Washington to reform healthcare.

Critics of the guidelines, issued on Monday by the U.S. Services Task Force, an independent panel sponsored by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Quality, say the new guidelines are a step backward and will lead to more cancer deaths.

Here are some of their concerns.

* Dr Carol Lee, chairwoman of the American College of Radiology Breast Imaging Commission, said she fears insurers -- both private and public -- will use them to pare back health costs.

"These new recommendations seem to reflect a conscious decision to ration care," Lee said in a statement.

"What is going to happen is insurers are going to say, 'The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force doesn't support screening. We're not going to pay for it,'" said Dr Daniel Kopans, professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and a senior radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

"There were no new data to assess. One has to wonder why these new guidelines are being promulgated at a time when healthcare is under discussion and I am afraid their decision is related to saving money rather than saving lives," Kopans said.


CONTINUED AT:

www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5AF5OS20091116


There's that word again ... ration. Perhaps it was inevitable, but we're being governed by bean counters, politicians interested more in the numbers than in people's lives. This isn't representative government. It's social science.

[Clipper]

It's only the beginning and a preview of things to come if we can't stop the bull in a china shop, charging ahead with Obama's healthcare agenda.

Limiting the age when a woman can get a mammogram as a routine test, paid for by insurance, will only lead to other testing being forbidden or requiring special approval. Possibly making a PSA test for prostate cancer a test that will only be paid for every 2nd or 3rd year.

Not alarmest to think that the government's plans will include cutting out routine testing, or limiting it. Not alarmest to foresee the government at some point deciding that a certain criteria must be met in order to qualify for insurance funded chemo or radiation.

Government doesn't belong with their nose in healthcare issues, and women should be allowed to have a mammogram once a year at any age over 40. Why make even one woman wait until she is in stage 3 before diagnosing her, because she is under fifty.

This is the kind of declines in services and quality of care issues that we can expect when government tells companies that they have to cut costs to the consumer, and provide the services to those that can't pay the freight.

[dgriffin]

Nov 17, 2009 0:07:43 GMT -5 Clipper said:

This is the kind of declines in services and quality of care issues that we can expect when government tells companies that they have to cut costs to the consumer, and provide the services to those that can't pay the freight.

I think we can expect the declines anyway, despite who is paying for them. And I have no information that insuring the currently uninsured is the largest contributing factor to expected health care cost increases.

My opinion is that so-called "single payer" is coming, whether we like it or not. More and more throughout the globe, government provided health care is becoming the norm. How other countries afford it is through rationing, no matter what one calls it.

I would like to still go to the doctor and pay him $15, pick up a prescription for $7 instead of $170, and have a simple procedure done at a hospital for $150 rather than $15,000, but those days are gone.

Other than greed ... and there's a lot of it ... I don't exactly know how it came to be that medicine got so expensive. But it may have something to do with the expectations we've placed upon the medical community. A lot of really incredible diagnostic and treatment advances have been made in the last two decades. I guess they cost a lot of money.

[bobbbiez]

Whoa is me. Another Task Force Study and Guideline.
Who is one to believe? First it's good for you and then it's not.

Best solution that I practice is to do what you believe is best for you.

[dgriffin]

And now, the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have attacked the federal Preventive Services Task Force panel's conclusion, saying that they would not change their guidelines and would continue to urge women to undergo the tests beginning at age 40. You would think the Services Panel would have reviewed their recommendation with these groups before coming to any conclusions. Their indifference indicates the feds were primarily interested in money savings rather than life saving. This is one example of how the feds plan to pay for government health care ... cut services.

latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/11/dont-like-those-new-mammogram-recommendations-youre-not-alone.html

[Clipper]

Eaxactly Dave. They are looking to lay the groundwork for new guidelines as to what will be acceptable frequency and charges under the proposed healthcare plan.

The next creaking noise you hear may be your anal sphincter stretching to it's limits with all the costly government programs being crammed up there.

[bobbbiez]

I've been thinking about this a lot and I honestly don't see them changing the guidelines much at all. In the guidelines as they stand now and because of my own personal experiences I do see where some doctors do go overboard on exams and that can be monitored better.

It is a subject close to home since my Mom and my grandmother both had racial mastectomies performed but that was a time when women were not as aware of breast cancer as we are now. We know now to constantly make our own breast exams and what to look for and to seek our doctors opinion if something doesn't seem right. That in itself is most important and should be done by every single woman no matter what age they might be. Self-awareness in this is most crucial long before a test is even considered.