Federal Government is Backtracking!!!!!!

Are we expected to BELIEVE the government after they have shown what they do with Social Security?  They dip into SS whenever they feel a need to and then in the next breath scream about SS going bankrupt from their own making, not ours.  The government will follow whatever the private sector does because they are in it for the money...like like the health insurance providers are.

The only reason why they are backtracking and pretending that everything is sweet is because they want women to forget about these recommendations and feel that the "Task Force" will not affect them. 

They have the power to reverse this very negative decision.  The real question that this woman deflected is do they have the WILL to do so?  Nothing changes until they put it back to 40 or >40 and SBE...everything else is just hot air!

Thanks for posting this!  We need to stand up and fight Health Care rationing...This is only going to get worse, if congress passes Health Care Reform.  Call your senator's now. 

If Government Health Care passed--once they take over private health care which is the plan in the long run........you will fall under the new guidelines of the Federal Health Plan. Obama sees the elimination of all private Health Care in the United States between 10-20 years, he knows he has to slowly take health care away BIT BY BIT so you don't notice the rope squeezing around your throat! It is the same way he said he would have PREFERRED gas prices SLOWLY go up in PRICE rather than all at once (again bit by bit).

They are testing the waters by going after WOMEN HEALTH CARE ISSUES first! It will not be the last. Why didn't they go after Cardiac Care first to test the waters? These are two of Americas largest HEALTH CARE ISSUES......and they went after the one that affects WOMEN the most! 

FASCISM-------FASCISM-------FASCISM! That is what this Administration is!

"Fascism's approach to politics is both populist--in that it seeks to activate "the people" as a whole against perceived oppressors or enemies--and elitist--in that it treats the people's will as embodied in a select group, or often one supreme leader, from whom authority proceeds downward. Fascism seeks to organize a cadre-led mass movement in a drive to seize state power. It seeks to forcibly subordinate all spheres of society to its ideological vision of organic community, usually through a totalitarian state. Both as a movement and a regime, fascism uses mass organizations as a system of integration and control, and uses organized violence to suppress opposition, although the scale of violence varies widely."

Our leaders, from the top down, need to have the same Health Care Reform, their forcing down our throats. 

I've been thinking on this matter, about the USPSTF disconnect from impact on the public of their guidelines. I mean, these are well seasoned doctors, selected for their policy making advice based on their expertise in evaluating numbers. I read too what the Co-Chairwoman wrote, that she had no idea this would stir up a firestorm but now is aware.

In short, I don't buy it. Seven years ago a similar USPSTF guideline stirred up a similar firestorm. Are we to believe the committee has selective memories? And as a Co-Chairwoman, the same sex in which most breast cancer occur, with a lifetime incidence of one in nine, leading a panel which suggests mammograms in America are not valuable by in large in the 40 to 49 age group. We're suppose to believe her when she says she didn't know such would stir up trouble? Really?

As I've said before, and I know I'm in the minority here, I believe they ALL knew what they were doing and much was considered, bantered about between themselves about impact of the guidelines, which were undoubtedly seen by AHRQ prior to publication in The Annals of Internal Medicine. Panel experts who are about to impact social health policy don't work in a vacuum, hidden away from agencies, hierarchy's of chain of commands, void of outside agency conversation over something as visceral as a change in US breast cancer mammogram guidelines. Especially so when their is present and ongoing debate about national Health Care Insurance Reform.

I wish it weren't so that I draw this conclusion. It would be so might tidier for my mind. I wish to have hope that 3% of women and men aren't sacrificial human beings in America. But the reality is that close to 50 million American's are uninsured because of no social net, and 44,000 die annually due to no health insurance. So it's reasonable to say, in this unjust climate, that a new policy where 3% of US citizens are cast aside for national money savings fits in with the rest of the thinking. And it's reasonable to say that more rationing in Medicare specifically (up to $500 billion dollars over the next decade in savings, i.e., some rationing all because the Medicare coffers were raided) will occur with even greater percentages of Americans being the rationee. 

It sadden's me greatly that our government may think Americans are so stupid and will go along like sheep to their slaughter, but I think they do. Democracy stops being a democracy when a few in power make wide reaching decisions on what's "best" in health care for the masses. We have been shown a plutocratic government this past year, one serving the benefits of the elite, not the taxpaying middle class. These same plutocrats, if unstopped, both Congressional and Executive will further their health care cause in this pending bill if possible. Two thousand pages are a lot to read, it's hard to find check the crevice's for far-reaching society health impact. Already in the Stimulus bill I believe, rights to set up health care bodies for best evidence decision making etc was inserted in the wee hours of the night, and passed. This is so dishonest and un-American.

I voted for the current administration with joy in my heart for change. Much of my hope and joy has been dashed by shocking support for the haves at the expense of the have nots. That is my opinion, but I share it to let you know I support democracy. These guidelines have been trounced upon, pushed to the side already. But they are a warning to all that bureaucratic agencies are out there with an agenda which may be separate from one which the majority of women and men in America favor, such as coverage by a simple, inexpensive mammogram at an early age in the right case to evaluate for the presence of a deadly disease, and to have such covered paid for by the high premiums we pay our monopoly insurers.

For some reason, ladies, I see so much clearer than I did a year ago on how America is changing. I've been touched by the suffering of a family member with lost jobs, no insurance, foreclosure, bankruptcy, ill health, near death, pulled from the brink, my own savings used to help, and I'm angered by Wall Street, Big Banks, Big Pharma, Controlling Insurers, and yes, inept government. 

I am writing my Congressmen and the President regularly. This most recent USPSTF fiasco was just the straw that broke the camels back and let the flood gates open.

This is just my opinion, but freedom of speech is still free in America.

Tender

Hello, Tender,

Thank you for your thoughtful post. I want to respond to just one thing.

You said: "It sadden's me greatly that our government may think Americans are so stupid and will go along like sheep to their slaughter, but I think they do."

I don't think the current administration and congress think the American people are willing to go along. My opinion is that they think we are small-minded and ignorant about what is best for the country, so the voters' opinions be damned. I find that kind of calculated disregard for their constituents to be dictatorial and extremely scary, but there is really nothing we can do to stop them and they know it. By the time we can vote them out, the deed will be done.

That doesn't mean I'm not in favor of speaking out. I just hope all our efforts will minimize the damage.

Tricia

American Cancer Society's Brawley Backpedaling

According to the Atlantic's John Crewdson, the only American reporter at the Stockholm news conference in 2002, on The Lancet publication of the Swedish meta-analysis, analyzing and updating the half-dozen Swedish mammography studies that told us nearly all of what we knew about the value of mammography, last month, Dr. Otis Brawley, the cancer society's chief medical officer, was quoted in the New York Time admitting "that American medicine has overpromised when it comes to screening. The advantages to screening have been exaggerated."

Crewdson wasn't surprised by Brawley's statement, since he had expressed the same view to him when they met at a cancer symposium in Milan in 2003.

Following the task force report's release, however, Brawley appeared to change direction, telling the Times that the cancer society had concluded that the benefits of annual mammograms beginning at 40 "outweighed the risks" and that the ACS was sticking by its earlier advice. One of Brawley's colleagues said, "He's trying to save his job. He was broiled at home for the interview in which he said that the medical establishment was 'overselling' screening."

Dr. Donald Berry, head of biostatistics at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, points out that if the Swedish update is read carefully, the benefit for women 40-50 is really only 9 percent, which is not statistically significant, meaning it could represent the play of chance and not a real advantage. What Brawley failed to mention is that the numbers the news media are flinging around are the relative benefit. Utterly obscured is the number that really matters, the absolute benefit.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911u/mammograms