I can understand the cold, actuarial analysis which compares some extra tumors found in later stages requiring more aggressive treatment and some extra deaths versus cutting the number of mammograms by more than half (1/2 years vs 1/year + higher starting age). I can’t figure out how “And it said doctors should stop teaching women to examine their breasts on a regular basis” will save any money, unless they are counting cost of the number of noncancerous lumps found and biopsied which wouldn’t be found until a biannual mammogram and seen as noncancerous on the x-ray.
You cannot fathom how angry I am right now...
The government SOB’s DON’T want women doing self exams and finding those lumps that needs COSTLY investigation. Rather have women die FROM A TREATABLE CANCER!!!
That line about the self exam HAS TO BE A MISPRINT. No rational human would say that.
“unless they are counting cost of the number of noncancerous lumps found and biopsied which wouldn’t be found until a biannual mammogram and seen as noncancerous on the x-ray.
That’s exactly what they’re doing: every form of breast cancer screening results in false positives that cost money and patient time to disconfirm. I think the premise here is that ASSUMING mammograms every 2 years, the value-added of breast self-exam is low. For every women who is spared a premature death, there will be hundreds or thousands of others who undergo avoidable biopsies, physician consults etc. So when everything gets toted up, we’d be effectively spending millions of dollars for each added year of life.
It’s a classic illustration of cost-ineffective care. If women want to spend their own money on more frequent mammograms or the follow-up care that results from monthly breast self-exam, all power to them. But we shouldn’t protect them from facing this trade-off by socializing the costs of cancer screening through private insurance or public insurance, because that just dumps the cost on everyone else.
Medicine is replete with examples like this. Obama vastly oversimplified the issue by talking about red pills and blue pills and acting as if all we need to do is eliminate care that confers zero medical benefits. In reality, most of the “excess” care in our current system does confer some benefits to patients, but the size of the gains in life expectancy or health status are too small to warrant the large costs required to achieve them.