Mammogram wrap-up

We guessed it. Both sides of the Great Political Divide went crazy and blamed either “big government rationing” or “big insurance profits” as the reason for the new paper’s recommendations. Both sides were at pains to say how much they were “for” women (I am too!). Both sides suspected a deeper conspiracy because of the timing of the paper. Nobody stopped to consider that both conspiracies can’t be true simultaneously, and that maybe—just maybe—the people who wrote the article believed what they were saying. Or, even stronger, that its findings might be correct.

Absolutely nobody I heard even made even so much as an attempt at a hint to explain “Why 40?” It’s as if beginning screening at 40 was handed down by sacred tradition, and thou shalt not question it.

Like I said, 40 might even be right for some women, but you can’t know that by any arguments you heard from the press, physicians, government bodies, and medical societies over the past three days. All we got were non sequiturs, illogical emotional probes, distractions, irrelevancies, and on and on. The closest anybody came to justifying the age was “40 saves lives,” which I hope you can agree is no sort of argument at all, merely an appeal, loosely, to authority.

We also heard, in the parade, from a handful of people who said, “The mammogram saved my life.” We did not hear from the larger group of women who never had a mammogram and never had cancer, either. Nor were there any voices from the immensely larger false positive crowd.

Nobody stopped to consider that both conspiracies can’t be true simultaneously, and that maybe—just maybe—the people who wrote the article believed what they were saying.

It is a mistake to think that conspiracies are run by cynical people who don't believe what they are saying. Most conspiracies are run by people who completely believe what they are saying, they are simply deluded.

For example, I believe Al Gore really thinks he knows exactly what he is talking about, he's just that stupid.

However, as Rahm Emmanuel said, you don't want a good crisis to go to waste. So of course people will use this report to help or attack Obamacare. Agree or not with the report, it's a perfect example of how Government is going to "trump" science.

Not that the report isn't science -- but it is clear it is just ONE report, and the critics are also citing facts. It is at best an unsettled question, but under Obamacare this government agency is the one that will get to decide what your health insurance covers, so instead of being one voice in the mix that can be debated, their report and recommendation would have been the end of it.

And while I'm sure this task force is already corrupted by political considerations, I can GUARANTEE that, under Obamacare, this task force WILL be bought and paid for by someone, because it will simply have too much power to be left alone. Every insurance company will want to manipulate them, as will every advocacy group.

So even if you don't believe the task force acted under pressure from one of the groups now exploiting the study, it would be naive to believe that under Obamacare, they WON'T be.

When the government needs to save money, this panel will no doubt issue a report EXACTLY like the one just issued.

Now, for conspiracy -- I want to know if the new CBO number for the Senate plan takes into account the recommendations just made. Because if they just cut $50 billion out of the Obamacare cost by using this study, i think it proves that the study was timed for the Democrats.

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