When I first read the headline to this article I was a little shocked.  Typically you’d think doctors and other medical experts would side on the “better safe than sorry” side of cancer screening.  America has the best breast cancer survival rates in the world, and you have to think that encouraging early mammogram screenings and at-home self exams are pretty key to that end result even if they only seldom lead to actual cancer detections.

But a new government panel of doctors and experts are telling women to give up self-exams and to wait on mammograms until they’re 50, and only then twice a year.  They say that the earlier mammograms and the self-testing at home lead to too many false positives that suck up too many medical resources.

Is that true?  I’m not sure I’m medical expert enough to say one way or another, but when I read this part of the article I’ve got to wonder what’s really motivating these people:

The new guidelines were issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, whose stance influences coverage of screening tests by Medicare and many insurance companies.

With Medicare teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and the federal government teetering on the edge of all but nationalizing the health care industry, are these government experts being motivated by a desire for healthier Americans or a desire for cost cutting?

And, well, that’s sort of the problem when we’re dependent on the government for something like health care isn’t it?  Once we individuals abdicate that responsibility to the government we suddenly have someone else making, or at least manipulating, our health decisions for us.  And what motivates those people?  Our personal, individual health?  Or their bottom line?

Granted, HMO’s and other insurance companies are often motivated by the same thing.  But the thing with them is that they’re optional.  Unlike the government.  If your HMO is screwing you, you can always pick another insurance company.  And if you don’t really have any choices, maybe the government solution should be to enhance our choices.  By doing stuff like, you know, allowing us to buy health care across state lines and stuff.

The risk of making ourselves dependent on the government for health care is having government panels determine what sort of coverages/treatments we can get and what we cannot get.  And that’s a life or death game.