There’s been a great deal of consternation over the last few days about the US Preventive Services Task Force recommending new guidelines for breast cancer screening and evaluation. Essentially, the task force recommends that routine screening begin at age 50 and is probably statistically useless after 75 or so. They further suggested that breast self-examination is so unreliable that women shouldn’t bother.
The history of when to begin screening women for breast cancer has a long history, as noted by ABC News. The guidelines have shifted over the years depending on what the latest studies showed.
It’s also important to understand that conflicting findings are very common in all forms of research and often leave the public confused or increasingly unwilling to believe in the accuracy of any research findings at all.
The task force’s report, however, concerns me for two other reasons.
First, the recommendations are based on statistical significance. All that means is that across all women, the most likely age for getting breast cancer is around 50 or older. Also, across all women, screening after 75 is not recommended because, statistically, they are near the end of their lives anyway.
See the shift? Breast cancer intervention based on probability, not individual medical needs.
Second, the recommendations will inevitably lead insurance companies to adopt the guidelines, which are obviously in their favor, because they can justify not paying for mammograms for women younger than 50 or older than 75. And if insurance companies know anything at all, it’s about probability and statistics.
Which brings us to rationing. The US Senate will debate its healthcare monstrosity tomorrow. Aside from all the other spending-into-oblivion by the current administration, the money to be spent in this bill will inevitably result in needed medical care far, far outstripping the resources to pay for it.
Decisions will have to be made. Some will get breast cancer screening, others will not. Guess what this will mean for your 76 year-old mother?
But the Obama administration didn’t wait for the prestigious semi-independent US Preventive Service Task Force. They have already set up an official government mechanism for using research to justify rationing: The Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research Membership.
A whole new bureaucracy to tell us what care we may or may not get by telling us that the “research” has made it so.
The government giveth, the government taketh away.
