Republicans Oppose Breast Cancer Screening Limits
by Connie Hair

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) yesterday announced its recommendation that women between the age of 40 and 50 years old, whose only risk factor is age, skip that yearly mammogram.  While at first glance this may simply seem like a bad idea coming out of a flawed study, a closer look reveals a more ominous rationale behind the decision: cost savings.

This may be the first big hint of what nationalized health care will do: sacrifice care standards—and lives—to save money. 

The USPSTF is a government controlled comparative-effectiveness research task force.  They changed the “guidelines” for breast cancer screenings for women, making recommendations based only on saving money. Should the Democrats’ government takeover of health care become law, these won’t be new guidelines—they’ll be the new government mandates used to ration health care.

Welcome to the future. 

I spoke yesterday with Rep. Charles Boustany, M.D. (R-La.) about his concerns over these puzzling new guidelines. Boustany was a heart surgeon before his election to Congress.

“I have a particular concern in this case about who was involved in this task force,” Boustany said.  “These are internal medicine doctors, pediatricians, family practitioners as well as OB-GYNs and nurses.  There are no surgeons or oncologists who deal directly with breast cancer or even radiologists. … I’ve seen far too many young women develop late-stage breast cancer because they didn’t have adequate screening.”

“Breast cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer death among women,” Boustany said. “The USPSTF admits that screening below the recommended age of 50 still saves lives. As federally funded comparative-effective research such as this becomes more widely available, patient safeguards are needed to ensure that government-run programs don’t misuse this data to deprive individuals of medically-necessary care due to cost.  Medical decisions need to be made by patients and their doctors.  Today’s announcement highlights the need to strengthen the doctor-patient relationship for women and all Americans.”

Read more here.