Posted on 11/18/2009 6:12:25 AM PST by shortstop
It's a death sentence.
Our first taste of Obamacare -- the government as the arbitrer of what health care we do and don't need -- will kill thousands of women.
It is a death list by another name.
A federal task force has declared that for most women mammograms are unnecessary before the age of 50 and should only be administered every other year after that. Further, breast self-exams are no longer recommended.
In a fight with a horrific disease in which early detection is the most-effective tool, America's women have been told by their government to forget about it.
Previous recommendations, based on years of experience and analysis, were for most women to begin annual mammograms at age 40 and to perform monthly breast self-exams starting at puberty. Countless thousands of women's lives have been saved by following that prudent, simple process.
The discovery of a lump or a mammogram anomoly led to further testing and treatment, and that jump on fighting cancer in many instances saved lives. Without that jump on the disease, it is an incontrovertable fact that women will die.
According to the federal government, however, that's OK.
Apparently there is some threshold at which unnecessary death is acceptable.
At least in the mind of the bureaucracy that is about to be put in charge of the nation's health care. The folks who want health care reform have tipped their hand with this first insight into rationing.
How will the government reduce the cost of health care? By allowing less of it. The savings in this new pronouncement alone are staggering. A good portion of an entire health-care industry has been swept away. Most women in their 40s are no longer going to be patients of breast-care clinics, and all the women over 40 are only going to go half as often. As much as 70 percent of the American mammography market just dried up.
Clinics will close, specialists will be diverted to other diseases, jobs will be lost.
And money will be saved.
The federal government, in an interesting coincidence, will pay out far less in Medicaid and new "public option" money.
But, unavoidably, people will have to die. Because it is a fact that each year women in their 40s have their breast cancer discovered in a routine mammograms. And it is also a fact that each year women or their husbands discover bumps which are breast cancer. And a certain percentage of women over 50 will have their tumors grow another entire year before they are discovered -- with the consequent deterioration of their condition.
And why? Why is it that the federal panel has taken this big sea change?
Because of the anxiety and inconvenience caused by false positives.
Seriously. Women who have an unusual mammogram, and have to come back for a sonogram or biopsy, end worrying about it. And that worry is a bad thing.
Of course, so is dying.
Further, there is the inconvenience of performing tests to verify the possibility of cancer.
Anxiety and convenience. According to the government, those are the reasons. At least the ones they will say out loud. Because the fact is that eliminating these life-saving screeings will be a vast cost savings. This is one of those ways the feds are going to "cut costs" so they can pay for their health-care reform. The cheapest treatment is no treatment and the candidate who said preventative medicine was the smartest medicine is presiding over a government which is turning its back on lifesaving cancer screening.
Because it's inconvenient.
This is what death panels do. They decide life and death. In this case, not specifically who will die, but that some will die. Some will die in order that others won't be inconvenienced. Some will die in order that health-care costs can be cut.
Let the rationing and the grave digging begin.
This is exactly why Barack Obama and the Democrats are not to be trusted with health care. This exactly why health-care decisions should involve patients and doctors, not beaurocrats or politicians.
But this isn't about politics, or whose side who is on. This is, plain and simple, about what is best for women's health. And there is no doubt that early screening is best for women's health. The government's task force may believe there is acceptable level of death, in exchange for convenience, but if the woman who passes away is your mother or your sweetheart -- or if it is you -- then every life is sacred and no needless death is tolerable. There are women who pray to live long enough to raise their children, or to spend another year in their career or with their husband, women for whom every day of life is precious and endangered -- and this policy says those women are, essentially, expendable.
Bull crap.
This is intolerable.
This is the rationed, death-list medicine of our darkest nightmares. This is the government run amuck.
This is between a woman and her doctor. And this is between the medical community and its patients. Experience, real doctors and the American Cancer Society all say that early mammograms and regular self-exams save lives.
So the question is: Who do you believe? The government, or everybody else.
Or, put another way: Do you know anyone who was diagnosed via mammogram before she turned 50? Do you know anyone who discovered her own tumor by self-exam?
Most of us answer "Yes" to those questions.
That means most of us know people who would have been killed by this policy.
Just consider the logic here - the epidemic of breast cancer is increased by testing women under 50. If we stop testing women under 50 (because their cancers are “mostly” small and “mostly” grow slowly anyway) the incidence of “reported” BC in women under will drop dramatically
voila, BC rates drop under the medical care program of the messiah (CNN headline)
“the Alar spray used on apples”
You are absolutely correct and the action was spurred on by testimony from that well-known, famous scientist who testified before Congress about it.....Meryl Streep
when I’m 74, I may have to go to Mexico or Costa Rica to get a mammogram if US Govt guidelines penalize or even make illegal “wasteful unnecessary spending” by doctors, even for private care
Soylent Green healthcare.
Everyone forgets that there is always a hidden agenda in Obama’s laws and rules. This one is to make sure that our population goes down. Why is he moving KSM to Manhattan? To cast Bush as a criminal. Why is he moving forward with health care? To bail out the unions who are over-extended with their health systems. Why did he have the stimulus package? To pay off those who voted for him. Am I cynical, or what?
Today, that well-known organization that purports to care about women, known as NOW, issued this statement to the press about the need for mammograms. Uh, well, maybe they didn’t issue a statement. Still waiting... Oh, that’s right, their annointed one’s administration issued the new guidelines. It’s OK then. No need to get involved.
And the next logical progression is that since mammograms are no longer needed, according to this report, before 40 and only every other year after, the new government-run health care plan will not cover them. No coverage, no test, no problem.
How’s that CHANGE working for you liberals?
Private medical treatment will be made illegal. They have to in order to achieve the “control goal” that is the basis of this whole “universal healthcare” concept.
Of course, the “elites” and those with “pull” will be able to work some loophole only available to “the ruling class”.
Perhaps they’ll “employ” a “private medical contractor”.
Maybe Katie, Oprah and the scores of liberal women around the country will begin to see what an anti-human administration we have. Where is N.O.W. on this?
That’s one thing I have come to understand about the left, and the feminist left in particular.
The “free market” and “industry” and the “insurance companies” and “corporations” are inherently anti-woman,
and anything the government does should be trusted to correct this injustice.
I am not a Catholic, but I admire and am enlightened by the late Pope John Paul II. His thinking and analyses of real world problems were profound and informed.
His identification of modern western liberal secularism as a culture of death is essential to understanding where we are, and where the apparatchiki of government and consumption will take us if we do not reject all of them and all of their ways.
Everything about Obama and indeed most of our politicians and culture is ultimately about limitation, decline and death. Obama is simply another beast in the herd of this stampede of retrogression.
Alan Keyes warned us about BHO first. BHO’s earnest struggle against BAIPA tells all there is to know about Obama. The rest is garnish and packaging. His touch serves only to wither and kill.
May God reward these people as they deserve, and quickly too.
It is like a mass insanity isn’t it?
Exactly. And what is the insurance companies word on this?
Is it more cost effective for them to pay for each 40+ year old woman to have a mammogram every 2 years than it is to provide 1/4 of those 50+ year old women with cancer treatment that wasn't caught in time? I would think they'd rather pay for the mammograms earlier.
In the long term, marxist redistributionists can NEVER allow private medical care, it perpetuates the class system don’cha know.
This is what the comfortable middle and upper classes do not realize. The goal is that they WILL be forced to accept the same substandard “free” care as the drones.
In other words, abortion will be free and legal, but getting an advanced chemotherapy drug (which the govt may force doctors to deny to patients who are too old or too sick)- from the private sector - may be illegal. Back to the back alleys for medical care! Or take a medical vacation to Mexico or China.
You raise a very important point. i.e. when breast cancer is not detected early and it spreads to the point where it is finally caught/treated, it will no longer be called ‘breast cancer’ in that patient.
The result in terms of statistics will be:
1. The government will be able to state that breast cancer has DECLINED and therefore the change in policy re mammograms has not had any negative effect.
2. The overall cancer death rate may increase but will be attributed to other factors.
In the end, the government will “win” this argument.
Hopefully, women will continue to encourage self-examination and teach each other, and particularly encourage young women.
Not only are they not going to screen but there will come a time when they will say that the later diagnosed cancers are not cost effective.
Membership of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force
Alfred O. Berg, M.D., M.P.H. Department of Family Medicine University of Washington Seattle, WA
David A. Grimes, M.D. Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences University of California at San Francisco/San Francisco General Hospital San Francisco, CA
Robert B. Wallace, M.D., M.Sc. Department of Preventive Medicine University of Iowa Iowa City, IA
Donald M. Berwick, M.D., M.P.P. (Task Force Vice-Chairman) Department of Pediatrics Harvard Medical School Boston, MA
Robert S. Lawrence, M.D. School of Hygeine and Public Health The Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD
A. Eugene Washington, M.D., M.Sc. Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences University of California at San Francisco/Mount Zion Medical Center San Francisco, CA
Paul S. Frame, M.D. Tri-County Family Medicine Cohocton, NY
Harold C. Sox, Jr., M.D. (Task Force Chairman) Department of Medicine Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Hanover, NH
Modena E. H. Wilson, M.D., M.P.H. Department of Pediatrics Johns Hopkins Hospital Baltimore, MD
Dennis G. Fryback, Ph.D. Department of Preventive Medicine University of Wisconsin - Madison Madison, WI
Big surprise, a bunch of #%@*&#$ academics.
They’ll need them.
"Now to just to make sure, ...you are a registered Republican is that right? And you're a member a Free Republic.com? And you voted Sarah Palin, correct? Fine. Now our executioner will fire two 9mm bullets into your head and we'll be finished here. Goodbye!"
The uninsured cost for a mammogram averages $102. The cost of doing mammograms every year from 40 to 70 is 30 * 102 = $3,060
Who here thinks that avoiding a 12.7% risk of dying from breast cancer is not worth $3,060?
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