[vette6387]

“But had I been subject to current guidelines, I would have had at a minimum an arduous battle with cancer and in all likelihood I would have died.”

For sure, and they're trying to do the same thing with PSA tests. They pick the two things that are most likely to kill us men and try to proscribe proper treatment. Medicare only allows one PSA test per year, but your doctor can get others so long as it's a “diagnostic” and not a “screening” code. You can't tell me the effort isn't conscious.

[hinckley buzzard]

Asymptomatic prostate cancer is very slow growing and usally the patient dies of something else before the cancer gets him. The PSA yields a very high percentage of false positives which can lead to needless, yes expensive, and sometimes very inconvenient treatments.

[shibumi]

My Doc (the same one mentioned in my earlier post) took advantage of a recent hospitalization to do a lot of “diagnostic” testing on me.

I trust him as I trust myself, but I did inquire why he was ordering so many tests and he flat out said that while I was in the hospital he could get away with a lot of stuff that would otherwise be denied by Medicare. (Unless of course I wanted to pay out of pocket for them - which just isn’t an option.)

I guess I’m luckier than a lot of folks.