Hmmm. Had the federal government issued such guidelines under, say, the Bush administration, the left would be stark raving mad, claiming George W. Bush wanted women to die of breast cancer. It will be interesting to see how they react to this news. As far as I’m concerned, the federal government is just getting ready for the passage of ObummerCare. This is just a trial baloon to see how Americans react to having life-saving screenings slashed to save money.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
For years, women have been taught to perform regular breast self-exams and those 40 and older told undergo annual mammograms to detect breast cancer, a disease that kills about 40,000 people in the U.S. every year. Now, radical new guidelines released by an authority on screening has this message: nevermind.
The new U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, state that routine mammograms aren’t necessary for women of average cancer risk in their 40s, and that women between 50- and 74-years-old don’t need to undergo mammograms more often than every other year. They also recommend that physicians abstain from teaching women how to examine their breasts for signs of cancer because of a lack of evidence that it is of any benefit.
By scrubbing the previous recommendation of annual mammograms for women 40 and older, the new guidelines are likely to be both controversial and confusing. They also raise concerns that health insurers will curtail coverage and reimbursements for screenings that fall outside the guidelines. …
Members of the medical community are shocked. While there are more instances of false positives with increased screening, the lives saved is worth it. Not only that, early detection can mean far less expensive treatment of the disease, thereby saving money in the long run for patients and insurers.
No doubt when insurers start denying coverage for yearly mammograms (thanks to this report), the politicians will bludgeon them for following the federal guidelines.
The American Cancer Society has come out opposing such nonsense. This defies common sense. I guess the “Task Force” knows better. Yeah right. They have just set the age for which a woman can be more of a liability than contributor to Obamatopia. Where are the woman’s groups now!!!!?
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The progressives do NOT care about women children or our elders. They care not a wit about minorities, gays and human rights for the oppressed. They also don’t care about the welfare or security of the nation.
They just want power.
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Yes, breast cancer is more common among women over the age of 50 but it is also the less aggressive forms of cancer than those found in younger women. My sister found a lump, was diagnosed and had a mastectomy when she was 38. There had been no cases of breast cancer diagnosed in our family at that point meaning she wouldn’t have been screened and, in fact, even under the old guidelines she would not have had her first mammogram for another two years. Thank goodness for self-exams. I’ll be curiously watching for a public response from Melissa Etheridge and Sheryl Crow as both found their own lumps and both were under 50 when they were diagnosed with breast cancer.
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My sister found a lump at the age of 42 and had a bilateral mastectomy shortly thereafter. This shows that mammograms at the age of 40 are necessary. As Ramona, who wrote a message above, expressed, we also had very little breast cancer in our family….I had a grandmother who had it, and that’s the only person. I strongly oppose this task force’s decisions-it is just nonsense. And, also, what Drs would not recommend patients do self-breast exams. This just doesn’t make any sense to me.
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This is just another blatant example of the collectivist mentality: individuals do not matter until there are enough of them to be a “group worth defending”, basically.
We do NOT live in a Democracy, where the will of the collective is most important. We live, specifically and deliberately, in a Constitutional Republic where every individual life is considered sacred and endowed with unalienable rights (granted to us, Constitutionally, by the grace of a God you may not even believe in).
This “advice” from a “government task force” is no small thing. It, too, has a hidden motive that is not benign.
I would hope people continue to scream for their individual freedom until these people are driven out of D.C.
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