Obama Administration Backpeddling On Mammogram Pronouncement
After taking office, Obama established a task force to study how to health care more efficient, and thus cheaper, for we Americans. On Monday I posted on one of the panels findings. Namely, that women should refrain from self-testing for breast cancer at home and delay routine mammograms until their fifties. Both findings running contrary to long-standing recommendations from organizations like the American Cancer Society.
Today Obama’s Health Secretary, Katherine Sebelius, is doing damage control telling Americans to ignore the findings of this panel.
WASHINGTON – Women should continue getting regular mammograms starting at age 40, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday, moving to douse confusion caused by a task-force recommendation two days earlier.
Sebelius issued her statement following a government panel’s recommendation on Monday, that said most women don’t need mammograms in their 40s and should get one every two years starting at 50.
That recommendation was a break with the American Cancer Society’s long-standing position that women should get screening mammograms starting at age 40.
The task force does “not set federal policy and they don’t determine what services are covered by the federal government,” Sebelius said. …
“The task force has presented some new evidence for consideration but our policies remain unchanged,” she said. “Indeed, I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action.”
The problem, of course, isn’t that this task force’s recommendations for breast cancer screening were to immediately become policy. The reason people are up in arms over this is because of what it portends for government-controlled health care.
Remember that the health care bill that passed in the House would require that all Americans and employers choose their health insurance policies through a government health care exchange that includes only plans approved by the government. Meaning that if some government task force or panel or bureaucrat determines that covering mammograms for women in their thirties is unnecessary, or covering screenings that are initiated by a woman detecting a lump in an at-home self exam, then they won’t be covered.
And we’ll all have to accept that. Because the government will control our health insurance for us.
Now, I realize that there are differing opinions on when breast cancer screenings should begin in earnest. There are similar differing opinions about all sorts of medical issues. Meaning that government attempts to control our health care and health insurance coverage for our own good might not just put us in danger, but will also undoubtedly create resentment among segments of the public who might not agree with the level of coverage the government determines is adequate.
That’s why the key to health care reform isn’t more government control. It’s choice.
