Delayed Pap test proposal, breast cancer report fuel health fight ('Death Panels,' anyone?)

Washington Times ^ | 11/21/09 | Valerie Richardson

[JohnHuang2]

A leading medical group added new fuel to a budding health care controversy on Friday by recommending that women delay their first cervical-cancer screening until age 21 instead of starting the test three years after becoming sexually active Continues...

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Say, didn't a certain someone mention 'Death Panels'?

The "U.S. Preventive Services Task Force" -- otherwise known as Palin's "mythical" *Death Panel* which oddly would cease being "mythical" if ObamaPelosiReidCare became law -- is worried that too many American women in their 40s are having their breasts examined.

With precision timing, two weeks after National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the government panel says that women should take their chances and wait until they reach 50 to get a mammogram. And even then only every other year.

Just a few years ago (in '02), the same infallible panel recommended annual mammograms for women in their 40s after a big drop in cancer death rates since the early '90s when routine mammography became standard practice. Now, based on no new evidence, the panel changed its mind.

Breast cancer is still the second leading cause of death in women -- but, relax. You can trust a government panel that changes its positions like Obama changes positions on Afghanistan.

Since many breast cancers are caught in women in their early 40s, the "report" says women in their 40s don't need mammograms. After much study, the government panel concluded that when a women receives a false-positive, it results in feeling anxiety. (In a separate study, the panel concluded that when a deer sees headlights, the deer feels anxiety.) So, by the "report"'s impressive logic, it's better to risk getting more severe cancer by delaying, rather than feeling anxiety for a few days from a false-positive result.

Obama told Congress in September that "routine checkups and preventative care, like mammograms" are good "because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse" -- unless a government-run Death Panel changes its mind.

Liberals are enraged that the panel's lunatic recommendation is being criticized. On the basis of having no radiologists and oncologists on the panel, the media considers this a panel of "experts".

In order to preserve the media meme that Palin's warning about Death Panels is still "false" despite the evidence, libbies have erected a series of phony defenses.

Phony defense No. 1 is that cost-control wasn't a factor in this bogus "study", yet the "report" mentions costs three times and, as Dr. Elizabeth Vliet (who actually is an expert on women's health) said on Fox News, the 'report' "was not based on new medical data, it was based on combining cost-effective data in the computer modeling to re-evaluate the data that supplied our current recommendations . . . and if (cancer screening for women in their 40s) saves lives, the point was it didn't save enough lives in younger women, so [the panel] felt, 'well, fine, we don't need to do it.' But if you're the woman whose life is saved, then it is important and that is why I think this is so critical for women to understand we're facing the possibility of rationing based on cost rather than women's lives."

Another bogus defense is that these are only 'guidelines', nothing to see here, move along. HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius defended the panel by backing away from it, claiming it's just a recommendation from some 'independent panel' going rogue.

This panel is so rogue, Medicare gloms on to its guidelines "when it makes coverage decisions for seniors, and its judgments also play a large role in the private insurance markets," (WSJ, 11/19), and under Obamacare, "this task force [becomes] an arbiter of the benefits that private insurers will be required to cover as they are converted into government contractors" and "what are now merely recommendations will become de facto rules . . .," (WSJ, 11/19).

Liberals get hysterical when anyone suggests a link between abortion -- a procedure to save a woman from being "punished" with a baby -- and breast cancer, insisting that the "consensus" in the medical community is that no such link exists, yet the consensus in the medical community about the new mammogram recommendation is that it's full of crap, so libbies have worked themselves into a frenzy this week attacking the medical community.

Then, along come "new guidelines" from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists urging women to wait until they reach 21 to have a Pap smear, which can prevent invasive cancer by detecting pre-cancerous changes in the cervix in time.

The ACOG's big flip-flopper-oo and the USPSTF's recommendation to fight cancer awareness because it makes women anxious are both just ObamaCare dress rehearsal, and if more women die that's okay with libbies -- can't make an omelet without eggs and can't build health care utopia without pushing for death panels and rationing. "Guidelines" from Obama's mastectomy-counters proliferate when doctors and patients no longer call the shots. But, don't worry, CBO says this tyranny is 'deficit nuetral'.

And if the timing of the cost-benefit "analysis" by the boobs on the USPSTF was goofy, it's of a piece with the Obumbler administration, which blew a trillion "stimulus" bucks on Congressional Districts which don't exist, can't find its policy on Afghanistan, can't decide if terrorist Hasan is a terrorist, can't govern with huge majorities in Congress, can't find a new home for Gitmo's harmless little darlings and thinks giving KSM a civilian trial will get al-Qaeda to come around while Iran's nuclear mullahs press full steam ahead on a radiology program of their own for Tel Aviv, Manhattan, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, etc. Gallup yesterday pegged Obama's approval rate at 49 percent but, hold on, he's shooting for 40 percent by Christmas.

Anyway, that's...
My Two Cents...
"JohnHuang2"

[JohnHuang2]

Saturday-morning ping!

[Eagles2003]

Rumor I just heard yesterday that the Wash. Times may be closing as early as next week. I think it was on WCBM radio.

[poobear]

Be a good little girl now, we don’t want excessive anxiety to disrupt your life with a false positive test result. You’rE probably not working anyway and are quickly reaching non-productive years. You’ve had your offspring to offset the lack of tax revenue you used to produce SO BE A GOOD LITTLE GIRL AND JUST DIE NOW!

[FrogMom]

NOW should be taking up arms any minute now.....

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

Anyone who only has medicare coverage is so dead.

[johniegrad]

I find it interesting that these two panel recommendations came out in the past week. One was even from a totally non-government affiliated group of physicians, the ACOG. Given these two sets of findings and the difficulty getting out the H1N1 vaccinations, it almost seems that the Hand of God is putting enough coincidences together to try to inform people what is going on here.

That's the only connection I can see because, try as I might, I can't put together a coordinated conspiracy here.

[devolve]

[mrs. a]

I come from a family of five girls. We’re in our 40’s. We were told almost from the cradle that we had to get anuual mammograms and pap smears; this was an essential part of “womens’ health care.” It was presented in a manner to make us believe that if we did not do it, we upped our chances of an early death.

I would imagine that pretty much any woman our age was given the same guidance.

This has been drilled into our brains for many years now. It’s almost a part of the culture. Every pink ribbon is a reminder. Every Susan G. Komen run is a reminder. Every poster on breast self-exams in the doctor’s office is a reminder.

Women will not sit idly by and suffer what they consider a reduction in ESSENTIAL health care. Whether the new guidelines are better or not, they will not be accpeted by Jane Six-Pack. This is another nail in Health Care Reform’s coffin.

[The Great RJ]

Wait until further “studies” are released by these government panels that say men over 70 shouldn’t be treated for prostate cancer or that persons over 80 should not be given pacemakers or cardiac bypass surgery because their life expectancy is “statistically” not reduced by withholding these treatments and great cost savings can result from following these new “guidelines”. We have every reason to be suspicious when these new “guidelines” from a government panel suddenly reverse decades of accepted medical screening recommendations.

[blackie]

Excellent!!!

[thulldud]

I recently saw an article that said most cancers in Europe are found post-mortem. Think about what that means....

[who knows what evil?]

I recently saw an article that said most cancers in Europe are found post-mortem. Think about what that means...

Thanks to 60 U. S. Senators; that will be the case in America VERY soon.

[potlatch]

Good post and text devolve.

Lol, wonder what the code pinkos and lib women are saying about this? How humiliating for them to know that Sarah Palin WARNED people of this while they derided her.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for this excellent wrap-up!