This shouldn’t be a political or even policy issue. This should be a science issue. There has been a discussion going for more than a decade now about cancer survival rates. There are some pretty smart people that believe survival rates have not changed much, we’ve just added a lot of people that had something that probably wasn’t cancer in the traditional sense to the numbers which skew them in a way that makes it look like more people with cancer are surviving.
Being treated for cancer varies from bad to fatal, knowing who needs to be treated for cancer and who should be left alone is a very important area of research regardless of who is in office or setting health care policy.
If you are curious, look at the Preventative Medicine Task Force recommendations, there are a number of tests that are not recommended because they actually pose a greater risk than benefit.
I’ll give you one example, if you are in your 80’s, do not let your doctor screen you for prostate cancer. The reason being is that you most likely do have it but it will not be your cause of death unless somebody decides to treat you for it.
I agree with you overall, and prostate cancer is a perfect example.
Cutting edge scientific discovery is expensive, and anything expensive is going to be political. Whether we like it or not, the two are mixed.
Anytime I see research that makes it into the media, I will automatically look to see who’s funded it. I’m just old and cynical like that.