Health Reform Bill – Mammo Guidelines NOT “JUST Guidelines” –

Tender...I just read the article you posted.  The sad part is, if this "Task force" finds new evidence at the drop of the hat and changes quickly happen based on this "evidence"...it will change back to this BS in 5 years, and will only change to get it passed.

I am personally going to email everyone that I know with this new information that Carol gave us.

WAKE UP PEOPLE AND STOP THEM FROM HURTING OUR FAMILIES WITH THESE IDIOTIC RECOMMENDATIONS IN THIS HEALTH BILL THAT WILL MAKE IT HARDER TO GET HEALTH CARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LittleC...Do you get the same feeling that I do, that our health care will very quickly be getting very bad?  That in the near future there will be many more people dying from cancer?  This is beyond scary people...this is horror in real life.  It is bad enough living through and dealing with cancer, but not to be able to protect your loved ones all because the government has created panels to decide who gets care and who doestn't is beyond comprehension that it is happening here in the US!

The government should stay out of health care because they are suppose to pass laws protecting us...not be one of the insurances!  Doesn't that create a bit of conflict of interest?

Thanks for the info. girls!  In England, the mortality rates for women with breast cancer, are 35% higher than in the US and this is heading our way. 

My health care recommended every two years for mammograms, for women 40-50years of age.  At 52 I was DX with IDC, and had lymph node involvement.  Ended up having 5.9cm's taken out, 8 rounds TAC,  followed by 5wks. of rads.  Maybe they could of caught it earlier.  Now after my last mammo. at 6months from treatment, they said see ya in two years. Go figure.

I'm wondering how all of you explain that other countries that follow the mammograms at age 50 guidelines have the same survival rates as the US?  

 It's so sad to me the way people react by blaming the government.   

There's a lot of misinformation on this thread, and that's unfortunate.  It's one thing to have a difference of opinion, based on different values, priorities, political perspectives, etc. etc.  It's another thing to repeat claims that are simply not true.

Yes, both the House and Senate health care reform bills make reference to USPSTF guidelines.  They do so in a section that deals with the reform of the insurance industry, limiting the ability of insurers to screw us over (OK, I'm editorializing there, but the bulk of this post will be fact-based - promise!).  One of the reforms is to require insurance companies to not only cover preventive services, but to cover them with *no* cost-sharing for the policy holder (no co-pay, no coinsurance, deductible would not apply). 

That's it.  Nothing more.  There's no sinister plot to deny women under 50 access to mammograms; quite the contrary, coverage for preventive services is being EXPANDED (even if not as much as many here would like).  If a woman's current employer-based plan covers screening mammograms starting at age 40, that's not going to change.  And if she doesn't have access to employer coverage and needs to get an individual plan through the insurance exchange, she can buy a plan that covers screening mammograms (which won't be hard, since most states already mandate coverage, though the specifics vary from state to state).  The only thing that will change is that fewer women will be uninsured (and how many of the uninsured d'you think get regular screening mammograms??)  and that women who've been diagnosed with bc, like all of us here, will no longer be uninsurable. 

So go ahead and oppose health care reform if you want.  But don't oppose it because of the utterly fictional notion that Congress/Obama/whoever has a stealth plan to prohibit mammograms for women in their 40s. 

Linda 

Lewing's post got me thinking. Then I remembered this:

WASHINGTON-"While the Obama White House is searching for a replacement for health czar Tom Daschle, policy work on health care reform--a priority for the administration--Is ongoing with one key advisor especially well connected.

The brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a noted bioethicist, is advising the Obama administration on health care reform.

Dr. Emanuel is the Chair of the Department of Bioethics at The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health and a breast oncologist.

Dr. Emanuel is a special advisor to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for health policy. He told me he is "working on (the) health care reform effort." He is "detailed" to the OMB spot and is still officially an employee of the NIH.

 According to his NIH bio, Dr. Emanuel is "widely published on the ethics of clinical research, advance care directives, end-of-life issues, euthanasia, the ethics of managed care, and the physician-patient relationship..."

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2009/02/dr_ezekiel_emanuel_rahms_broth.html

That umbilical cord between USPSTF, AHRQ and Congressional Health Care Reform legislative wording (now modified due to backlash) is getting awfully hard to cut imho.

Tender

I was hoping you'd post Ann -- you are a research goddess!!  I appreciated all the hard work you did on the other thread too.

I'm just curious... what would the advantage be to the government of killing off women aged 40 - 49?  

Do you understand the A and B ratings?  If so, I'm sure you are aware that the age change is a D rating, meaning that this section of the proposed legislation DOESN'T EVEN APPLY. 

The government can't stop you from performing self-exams.  It's a totally different topic.

I would guess that if you want to be all clinical about it, the future tax revenue potential of a woman in her 40s would outweigh the cost of reconstruction.   

klfh...Yes, I do understand that.  I also understand that it is giving more power to the "Federal Reserve" which is as "Federal" as Fed Ex.  It is a private bank and the IRS are it's goons to collect taxes from something that our congress should be in control of.

As far as the rating...all you need is a Dr. who is willing to do the bidding of the government and follow what the USPSTF states...Which is exactly what happened with my case.  I had a new gyn through a government source..and she refused my request of a mammogram at 35...even though my mother had breast cancer at a young age.  Now at age 37 I had a 10 cm tumor which WOULD HAVE BEEN SEEN ON A MAMMOGRAM AT 35 since it takes between 4 to 6 years to get that size.  You think it will only happen to me?  Good luck on that thought because it will affect our daughters, nieces and friends who will look like I do right now if it is not stopped.

You ask how I look..I have a bilateral mastectomy and my left side has major burns to where there is major weeping taking place because of radiation.  I have had to go through 6 rounds of chemo to the point that I went into anaphalactic shock and needed 2 blood transfusions.  I was not a candidate for immediate reconstruction done because of the extent of cancer that I did have.

Ann, you replied about cancer survival rates...

Well guess what?...it's our lucky day! I found much more recent data! Woo-Hoo! 

NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS (NCPA)

Thursday, October 11, 2007  by Betsy McCaughey

During this presidential election season, candidates are urging Americans to radically overhaul our "broken" health care system. Before accepting the premise that the system is broken, consider the impressive evidence from the largest ever international study of cancer survival rates.  The data show that cancer patients live longer in the United States than anywhere else on the globe.

Overall Cancer Survival Rates:  According to the survey of cancer survival rates in Europe and the United States, published recently in Lancet Oncology.

• American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared to only 56 percent for European women.  
• American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent - compared to only 47 percent for European men.
• Among European countries, only Sweden has an overall survival rate for men of more than 60 percent.
• For women, only three European countries (Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland) have an overall survival rate of more than 60 percent.

These figures reflect the care available to all Americans, not just those with private health coverage.  Great Britain, known for its 50-year-old government-run, universal health care system, fares worse than the European average:  British men have a five-year survival rate of only 45 percent; women, only 53 percent.

Survival Rates for Specific Cancers.   U.S. survival rates are higher than the average in Europe for 13 of 16 types of cancer reported in Lancet Oncology, confirming the results of previous studies.

Here's the entire article:

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba596

BONUS! They are a nonprofit, non-partisan public policy research organization!

klfh...I have had numerous Dr. tell me that it would have been caught.  They saw it as a 9.5 tumor originally, and it was 10 cm when it was removed. (I had IDC and then after chemo I had slow growing DCIS left)

And yes, I would have qualified under the screening because my mother had breast cancer at under 50 which puts me in a high risk group.

This bill will do nothing except bring the survival rate of cancer down and make it harder for women to get the care they need to detect this monster.  This bill states that the USPSTF has the last say in the cancer screening and on their website they state that very little cancer screening should be done...and then on women whose cancer is usually slow growing as it is well known that younger women usually have the aggressive cancers.