Shawn Farley, the director of public affairs for ACR, says: :
"If the USTSF recommendations are adopted as policy — particularly if Medicare and private insurers try to use them as an excuse to cut cost — many women will die unnecessarily from breast cancer (...) The treatment costs associated with the disease may rise because cancers would be found at a more advanced stage. For those women diagnosed at a later stage, they may experience more invasive techniques to remove the cancers because the disease is more advanced."
And here is the most damnable part: Not one, I repeat, NOT ONE oncologist served on the panel that recommended those revisions. To quote the source: “Let us just hope that our mostly male legislators and insurance CEOs have women that they are very fond of, and will work to protect this group of mostly female victims.” Never count on the goodwill of sexist pigs ... especially insurance company pigs and their Congre$$ional lackeys.
This post is a work-in-progress. Please look for a more detailed analysis on Monday.
Why do I think, irrational though it may be, that this will be used as "Proof" that the government and it's death panels should stay out of the insurance business?
ReplyDeleteThis accusation has already been thrown at the media. However, Kathleen Sebelius told CNN on Wednesday:
ReplyDelete“This panel was appointed by the prior administration, by former President George Bush.”
If the GOP throws that "death panel" crap at the Democrats one more time, just throw this GWB mammogram panel crap back at them.
Thanks for raising the issue of the USPSTF ill-advised report on breast cancer. The study was commissioned during the Bush administration, which may be why no oncologists or radio-therapists served on the study panel.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the American College of Radiology, the USPSTF recommendations ignored direct scientific evidence from large clinical trials and "also ignored peer reviewed journal articles that critqued studies on which their recommendations rely."
One trial that was used for the study was translated from Russian to English so that it could be used in the study, while many reputable articles were ignored.
Such selectivity in sources cited leads me to believe that the taskforce may have decided the results it wanted ahead of time, since they clearly will save money for insurance companies for a few years. The USPSTF panel then found studies to back up their assumptions, regardless of the cost of human life.
I like breasts and believe they should be protected. Ladies. Get your yearly mammogram.
ReplyDeleteThank you, maleeper. Your comment certainly sheds more light on how this mess came into being. This carryover from the Bush administration reminds me of another insult they tried to perpetrate. Remember this story (Washington Post - 2005) when the Bush administration tried to install Norris Alderson, a veterinarian, to head the Office of Women’s Health?
ReplyDeleteHere is what Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) said 4 years ago about that appointment:
"I was further concerned to learn last week that Dr. Norris E. Alderson, someone without women's health experience who has spent the majority of his career at the Center for Veterinary Medicine, was appointed acting director of this important office."
I cannot imagine how Senator Mikulski managed to restrain herself. At the time, most folks were livid about this.
So basically GWB starts a commission who come back and report that mammograms are a waste of time....
ReplyDeleteSo, then the health insurance companies cut back on what they pay....
So, the health insurance companies could hide behind this government panel and save themselves big bucks in the short term...
Only to end up then paying massive amounts for treating women who develop breast cancer because they did not get mammograms early...
Thats brillant! Just brillant!
Of course the same brillance was exhibited when they came up with supply side economics...
Or my favorite now is when they wonder where all the jobs are...
Lets see, FREE TRADE? Remember that one? Well, the jobs are overseas....
If the stimulus cannot create jobs then trust me, there are no jobs to create anymore at least not in this country....
I would think that mammograms would be something that an insurance company would want to pay for and pay more often for....
Its alot cheaper long term than paying for the treatment of breast cancer...
Kind of like an oil change...I can pay $20.00 and change my oil every 3,000 miles or I can save the money and go 30,000 miles between oil changes...I do save $200.00 by the way but I wonder what it will actually end up costing me...in the long run...
TAO, you got the gist of this story, but there are two points to be made:
ReplyDelete1. Women will die for lack of early detection;
2. Timing - I believe the Bush holdovers behind this bogus study released it just in time to hijack the healthcare bill winding through Congress. Already, the GOP is citing this as another "death panel" example. Talk about poisoning the well !!!
A routine breast self-examination revealed a lump in my left breast. The ensuing mammograms showed that I had early stage breast cancer in my right breast, the lump was a benign cyst. I hadn't had a mammogram in 3 years.
ReplyDeleteThe lump wasn't cancer, but the mammograms that were ordered to determine if it was showed that I had early DCIS in my right breast. The diagnosis was not life threatening, but it could have been had it not been discovered in its earliest stages.
I find it absolutely insane for anyone to suggest that mammograms and self-examinations should not be part of a protocol for breast cancer detection.
Early detection for all cancers saves lives.
If anyone has any doubts about this statement, talk to me.
I, for better or for worse, am now an expert in this subject.
That lifelong champion of women and their rights, the venerable Rush Limbaugh, has already seized on the new mammogram guidelines as a proof of the guvimint's evil plan to off us all, one woman at a time.
ReplyDeleteAmazing how feminist and socially conscious the wingnuts have suddenly become, with Obama in the White House and Palin in the media. They have even discovered sexism (which is what libruls do to Palin, just to be clear, but nothing else anywhere else).
As usual, I suspect the big giant pimple head health insurance industry is behind this bit of crap. What do they care if we lose a few? They are drooling over the millions, maybe even billions they'll save.
ReplyDeleteMore money for CEOs.
Women being marginalized yet again.
Every man in America needs to march on Washington, each wearing a tee shirt from TAO reading "SAVE THE TATAS!"
My point, while rather long winded, is that this board's recommendations goes against common sense.
ReplyDeleteYes, Octo I realize women die without early detection but what everyone has to understand is that to the healthcare insurance industry a dead person is an inexpensive person....or in common english, its called 'cutting your losses..."
I think the biggest mistake being made in the healthcare debate currently going on is that we have framed it as 'healthcare' when in reality you have health insurance, which has absolutely nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with limiting access to healthcare.
Should have called it health insurance reform from the beginning....
Then things like this board would be much easier to frame into the big picture...
Elizabeth, I read the Gumbo-Limbaugh transcript and it was all noise and incoherent as hell. In fact, it said nothing that I could wrap my tentacles around but merely served as a vehicle for expected bash and trash. Frankly, it was pointless … but I surmise that was your point.
ReplyDeleteAnd. . . they are now going after pap smears. New recommendations to that suggest yearly screening is not necessary. This one has been bubbling for awhile. I know of at least one state that has backed off of its mandate that paps must be covered yearly and now only mandates every two years - Pennsylvania.
ReplyDeleteMy sister was told every two years - she insisted on yearly - she was diagnosed with early signs of vaginal cancer.
Not one, I repeat, NOT ONE oncologist served on the panel that recommended those revisions.
ReplyDeleteSOP for the Bushies. They "planned" (if that's the correct term) the post-invasion occupation of Iraq based on clichés and gut feelings, not by listening to experts who actually knew about the society there. Global warming was ideologically inconvenient, therefore it was imaginary, and never mind what the climate scientists say.
It's always easier to get the result you want if you ignore anyone who has that inconvenient actual knowledge.
Yesterday one of the docs4patientcare/teabagger/realAmerican rallies was held in the park behind my apartment.
ReplyDeleteGlutton for punishment I am wandered over to listen to some speechifying. The event also tied into a campaign for US Senate by one Sean Salazar. Interestingly enough Salazars campaign placards & banners fail to mention he's a Republican. Can't say as how I blame him. So it was the usual mix of disaffected white middle-class victims ranting about Marxism the 'loss of liberty' and the soon to be end of America. Yawn. I sidled up to one bright-eyed oldster enthusiastically applauding the proceedings while clutching a sign reading 'No Government Health Care', smiled, caught his attention and asked him if he has refused his Medicare benefits.
The language!!