Sorry, but we were sold a Bill of Goods. We were supposed to get MORE Preventative Medicine screenings with Obamacare, not FEWER. I can tell you that, when it comes to Pap Smears, the ‘no smears after age 65 unless you have symptoms’ is designed to make sure that women over 65 will surely die of their cancers instead of our Government having to pay to treat them. Cells frequently shed well before there are symptoms of genital cancers. But if you wait until you have symptoms, then the cancer is going to be further advanced when it is caught and, subsequently, much more difficult to treat. Please wake up and realize that your Government doesn’t really care about your health, they just want to control all those health care dollars.
They are doing the same with prostate cancer. They want to do away with PSA testing. They do not want us to live too long, especially when we have outlived our economic use usefulness.
I agree that the government doesn’t care a bit about anyone’s health. However, there are too many tests being done. As for 65-year-old women and pap smears, hardly any woman that age needs one. The same is true of many other tests, and it is questionable if many preventive measures actually prevent anything.
Americans are having far too many tests and taking too many drugs. We are an over-treated society.
Check out the books by Dr. Nortin Hadler, MD and the book Overtreated by Shannon Brownlee, Overdiagnosed by H. Gilbert Welch, and How We Do Harm by Otis Webb Brawley.
Let me give you an example. I know of a 90-year-old woman who had a colonoscopy (that in itself is absurd). The doctor diagnosed cancer and they operated (another bad move on a 90-year-old). The woman developed an infection and nearly died.
Overtreatment can be deadly, particularly in the elderly.