Federal panel calls for less breast cancer screening
And so it begins. Obama’s government run health care bill hasn’t even passed yet, but he’s already got federal panels recommending rationing.
Women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms and older women should cut back to one scheduled exam every other year, an influential federal task force has concluded, challenging the use of one of the most common medical tests.
In its first reevaluation of breast cancer screening since 2002, the independent government-appointed panel recommended the changes, citing evidence that the potential harm to women having annual exams beginning at age 40 outweighs the benefit.
Coming amid a highly charged national debate over health-care reform and simmering suspicions about the possibility of rationing medical services, the recommendations immediately became enveloped in controversy.
“We’re not saying women shouldn’t get screened. Screening does saves lives,” said Diana B. Petitti, vice chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which released the recommendations Monday in a paper being published in Tuesday’s Annals of Internal Medicine. “But we are recommending against routine screening. There are important and serious negatives or harms that need to be considered carefully.”
Several patient advocacy groups and many breast cancer experts welcomed the new guidelines, saying they represent a growing recognition that more testing, exams and treatment are not always beneficial and, in fact, can harm patients. Mammograms produce false-positive results in about 10 percent of cases, causing anxiety and often prompting women to undergo unnecessary follow-up tests, sometimes-disfiguring biopsies and unneeded treatment, including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
But the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology and other experts condemned the change, saying the benefits of routine mammography have been clearly demonstrated and play a key role in reducing the number of mastectomies and the death toll from one of the most common cancers.
“Tens of thousands of lives are being saved by mammography screening, and these idiots want to do away with it,” said Daniel B. Kopans, a radiology professor at Harvard Medical School. “It’s crazy — unethical, really.”
The new guidelines also recommend against teaching women to do regular self-exams and concluded that there is insufficient evidence to recommend that doctors do the exams or to continue routine mammograms beyond age 74.
Some questioned whether the new guidelines were designed more to control spending than to improve health. In addition to prompting fewer doctors to recommend mammograms to their patients, they worried that the move would prompt insurers to deny coverage for many mammograms.
Less than a year ago, these same people were decrying the decline in mammograms among women in their 40s. And now, suddenly, with Obamacare looming, this panel just coincidentally came to this conclusion? Not shockingly, Ed Morrissey examines the doctors on this panel, and finds not a single oncologist present.
Barack Obama claimed that he would be championing increased screening and prevention. Yet now we’ve got a federal panel wanting to just cut back the number of mammograms performed, mammograms that could potentially be life-saving, because you could get a false positive and feel anxiety? I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’d rather be safe than sorry. I’d rather get the mammogram and have the doctors look into that suspicious lump, false positive or not, than just shove it off for a few years and end up having cancer in a more severe stage. Isn’t that what Obama’s panel here is basically recommending?
And they aren’t even going after just mammograms. They don’t even want women doing self-exams anymore! I guess they don’t want to take the risk of a woman who is “too young” finding a lump on her breast and getting it checked out, just to be safe. I mean, jeez, that would just be waaay too costly. The motivation here is clearly not to save lives or decrease some imagined anxiety women get over their mammograms. (After all, what person wouldn’t be anxious if they thought they had cancer? It seems perfectly natural to me.) It’s just pathetic and extremely depressing to me that Obamacare hasn’t even passed yet — and already, we have federal panels recommending rationing care.
I keep asking — are you happy you voted for change now? Is this the hope you wanted?
No more of this if Obama has his way.
Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter!
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Posted by Cassy Fiano on November 17, 2009 7:23 pm
» Filed Under Agenda based science, Barack Obama, Government malfeasance/misfeasance, Healthcare, Medical Malpractice/ethics, Nanny State, News, Science/pseudo-science, Stupidity
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6 Responses to “Federal panel calls for less breast cancer screening”
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Syndicate Me
The perfect health consumer in ObamaWorld:
A person who works himself into the ground for decades paying taxes for his “free health care”…and who then drops dead of a heart attack at his retirement party.
Health care denial on a sexist basis must be in the Constitution somewhere. Oh yes, here it is General Welfare, where the govt decides who is well and what treatments a woman will get and when(this term magically exempts elitists).
Arent these the same ones preaching healthy lifestyles? Isnt part of a healthy lifestyle Regular checkups?
And it will only get worse.
I am not going to blame Obama for this one. I am going to also point out they are most likely reversing a policy of calling for more screenings. Those screenings cost money and so cost you and me more even if they were not needed.
I suppose next you will complain when the federal government reduces taxes.
Mike: next week we’ll find out that prostate cancer checkups are unneccessary unless you’re 75 years old or older.
Kirwin: When, in the history of our country has a left-wing, government loving, career politician ever given us our money back?
Far be it from me to back up Obama and his monstrous health takeover but there have been legitimate concerns with having the screenings..it treats delicate tissue in such a way perhaps some of the cancer is a result of.. it gives yearly doses of radiation. There are better methods, but still they drone on about mammograms “preventing” cancer.. they do nothing of the kind.. at best they MAY, only may catch it quicker and at worst may be some of the factor of breast cancer itself.
Perhaps this is not due to the health care monstrosity, but the ongoing studies that indicate what I am saying could be true. And yes there is far less invasive, but more accurate ways of getting the data.
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Emphasis is moderator’s
Dave B,
I believe it was a Democrat that did it in the 19th Century. That is about the only time we were really given money back.
They are not going to do it this time since the HHS Secretary stated they would not listen to the panel’s recommendations.