No rationing to be seen here, please move along.

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
- Ian Fleming


First, it was the recommendation to cut back on those dubious start-at-forty mammograms and now the second shoe has just dropped.

New guidelines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first Pap test until age 21, and be screened less often than recommended in the past.

The advice, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is meant to decrease unnecessary testing and potentially harmful treatment, particularly in teenagers and young women. The group’s previous guidelines had recommended yearly testing for young women, starting within three years of their first sexual intercourse, but no later than age 21.

But the timing was coincidental, said Dr. Cheryl B. Iglesia, the chairwoman of a panel in the obstetricians’ group that developed the Pap smear guidelines. The group updates its advice regularly based on new medical information, and Dr. Iglesia said the latest recommendations had been in the works for several years, “long before the Obama health plan came into existence.”

Isn’t it crazy-wacky how these new recommendations are coming out now, on the eve of a big vote in the Senate on healthcare? Man, it’s just zany. (by the way, Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius said pay no attention to that mammogram recommendation. So, who’s right and who’s just covering their ass with respect to politicizing the healthcare debate?).

But we’ll give all those nice people in Congress and the White House who tell us healthcare services won’t be rationed the benefit of the doubt, again. No more freebies, though – next completely coincidental “recommendation” we get to cut back on testing/screening, we go full metal jacket.

But just to be on the safe side, why don’t you lob your Congressperson a phone call as the Senate will be making a very important procedural vote this evening at 8 P.M. (EST)… a time when all important votes concerning nationalizing 1/6th of an economy take place.

Senate phone numbers here.