Good Tuesday Morning....
All over the news this morning is the US Government's taskforce changing mammogram recommendations for women. Major changes, with the new recommendation being that a low-risk woman should not be screeened until after 50 (was age 40) and then every other year, not once a year. This will create quite the controversy as obviously, if a woman developed a small lesion at age 43, how would she eve know before it was way too late? Oh, well, think about how much money is being saved by NOT screening women over 40 and for those who develop cancer before age 50 (I would bet that everyone reading this blog has heard/known someone who developed breast cancer before age 50) too bad! Lets total up how much money the insurance companies will make by NOT having to pay for these mammograms. Tens of millions for sure.
Under the "governments" watch, obesity is killing Americans in numbers far exceeding swine flu and other medical issues making front page news. Aside from making insurance company executives millions more in bonuses, how about "the government" do a better job of monitoring the nation's largest health concern (obesity) and doing something about it in a more proactive way. Government weight loss centers? Better education programs in schools? Allowing tax subsidies for obese people doing weight loss programs which cost is bourne by taxing companies such as McDonalds extra for doing this to us?
Once again, these type of "guidelines" will set up a "haves" and "have-nots" system in which women with more money will buy their mammogram every yeat and those with less will be forced into screening every two years....and run the higher risk of cancer. Your thoughts?
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Dr. Posner... tieing into this debate... As we become a larger sized society.. obesity on the rise.. it will become much more challenging to detect these earlier signs of breast cancer.
I find it EXTREMELY disappointing that just when we need MORE sophistication/higher levels of technology to find breast cancer in our larger sized population.. mamograms not being all too effective detecting cancers for people with dense.. large breasts - that the solution is to say let's just drop screening altogether until we are in our 50's.
To me that is not a solution! If, indeed the problem centers on mamograms vs. dense breast - do we need to be rocket scientists to figure out the logical approach?? Seems pretty clear to me:
What we need is to adopt BOTH of the following approaches to save lives! One better though YES it can save money too!
1. Until we can solve this obesity epidemic we need to be doing just the opposite... not only continue mamogram screening but also routinely offer coverage for ultrasound screening -especially for individuals falling into the larger sized category.
2. MORE IMPORTANTLY though.. we really need to support and encourage individual's efforts to work proactively on preventative health by not only backing but putting SERIOUS INSURANCE COVERAGE AND INCENTIVES on weight loss!
One would think those CEOs running the insurance companies could have figured out by now that every dollar they authorize in health care prevention could save them several more dollars paid out on claims for conditions strongly linked to poor preventative health.
I am FLOORED that just when our society is at it's sickest, heaviest state we are going to stop screening????? WOW! What's next?
Well I guess we won't need to worry about the pharmasuedical companies going out of business anytime soon..
Sorry to be so opinionated on this.. I just wish everyone's experience of medical coverage, doctor visits, was not about treating illness and chasing that. I wish, from an insurance coverage standpoint, seeing a doctor fell more in the category of continuing education - optimizing health!
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