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MAN IN THE MIDDLE – UNEDITED: Your Obamacare Preview: Woman Stop Wasting Money On Mammograms!
If you wanted a preview of what life will be like under Obamacare, your dose of reality came this week. A government task force said women in their 40s don’t need annual mammograms, tossing out cancer screening guidelines that have been accepted for decades. Their report didn’t argue that mammograms have saved lives, on the contrary the study finds that for every 1,000 women in their 40s who receive routine testing, two cases of cancer are detected. The study also notes that 98 out of that 1,000 will have “false positives.” Meaning something looks cancerous, but further testing proves negative. The report stated that routine mammography for women in their 40s wasn’t worth the downsides, such as “false positives” and the exposure to radiation. The panel concluded that self-breast examinations were unnecessary too, as these proved to fall within the high range of “false positive.”
Welcome the world of Obamacare, where the 85 percent of us who are satisfied with health care will now watch the core of our coverage stripped away in the name of cost control. Remember earlier this year at one of his infamous town halls the President spoke about “unnecessary procedures” driving up the cost of health care and in the future such procedures would be eliminated? Well this is where the chopping begins. Apparently to the President and his Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebeluis, saving 2 lives out of 1,000, is not worth the high cost involved. Moreover, as for those other 98 women with the “false positive,” I assume Obama and Sebeluis believe they are wasting money too. As for your granny, the panel recommends cutting off testing for women over age 75. As the President put it “maybe you’re better off taking a pain killer.”
Now where do we go from here? I predict within the next year, thanks to these new federal guidelines insurance companies will discontinue mammogram reimbursements for women under 50 and over 75 years. When Obamacare finally kicks in, coverage for mammogram testing will not be an issue for debate since the private insurers will have already established economic precedent. That my friends is how Obama will make health care affordable for everyone, by eliminating routine but necessary testing one step at a time.
Last September, in his health speech before Congress, Obama spoke about preventative procedures like “mammograms and colonoscopies” being key to keeping longterm costs down. Apparently, the President is prepared to say anything, anytime to make his argument even risking the health of the majority.
One thing you can certainly count on, the First Lady Michelle Obama will have a mammogram before she hits 50, and it will be you and I the American middle class who will be paying for it.
