Saving the boobies...? Whats the rush? (UPDATED)

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


That annual mammogram? Yeah, maybe you don’t need it. So says the U.S. Preventative Service Task Force, an independent panel of experts appointed by the Dept. of Health and Human Services who up until recently were urging women to get ‘grams every one or two years starting at age 40. Now they are singing a different tune saying screening isn’t recommended until 50 and only at a bi-annual rate.

You’ll have to forgive our cynicism - healthcare rationing under government-managed healthcare is as inevitable as the sun rising in the East – and applying Occam’s razor to this recent development, this would appear to be the first big move in that direction.

However, slaves to moderation and sober assessments that we are, we’ll put this one in our back pocket and wait to see what, if any, dominoes fall next?

If weeks or months from now, this U.S.P.S.T.F. comes out and says the benefits of Dr. Jelly Finger just isn’t what it used to be, then we will revisit the issue.

(UPDATE #1):

LaMesa physician Reza Shirazi said it’s the most effective for patients and primary-care physicians to create a screening plan that’s comfortable for both parties.

“I think it’s best to have that decision at the discretion of the doctor and the patient,” said Shirazi, a radiation oncologist with the Alvarado Hospital Radiation Medical Group.

There it is again. The patient-doctor privacy issue. The privacy issue that was at one time considered so sacrosanct especially with respect to defending Roe v. Wade is now cast aside in the name of the statists’ new BFF, “controlling costs”.

The entire concept of government-managed healthcare flies in the face of patient-doctor privacy.

Again, we welcome anyone who has happened to stumble across this site to please square this inconsistency.

P.S. The quote above will not be found in the linked article authored by Gina Kolata of the New York Times News Service that appeared in modified form in the print version of today’s San Diego Union-Tribune. We copied it verbatim out of the paper because… we cannot find the electronic version of the story as it appeared in today’s paper. And this is because the U-T’s own online search engine has got to be the most worthless piece of crap in the entirety of print media. Even typing in the title of the article with the sub-title netted a “No results found”. Unbelievable. They scratch their heads wondering why no one reads the hard copy anymore and they can’t even get the simplest of features right on their online site.


(UPDATE #2): We kind of feel like we’re sniping from the sidelines since we don’t have a horse in the race, though the potential ramifications towards our own healthcare is enormous – so we would love to hear what the fairer sex thinks of the matter. And since hearing from the people who will be effected the most by this, we have decided to liberate to the front page the following comments:

SarahB says:

This has been a reoccurring concept all year...the screening for cancer is bad idea...you might have a false positive, so better to wait until you have full blown cancer so you know for sure. Right up there with not seeing a pregnant woman until she's 10 weeks along, or skipping the whole ultrasound thing till pregnancy is half over. Why catch a problem early? Not that mammograms aren't an arcane form of torture and degradation, but most preventative care seems to involve some form of ironic humiliation. Maybe the benevolent government is really out to give us back our dignity.

(emphasis, ours)
Pretty much the comment of the year at BwD.


And this from Foxfier:

Well, my mom would probably be dead under this.

Her screening came back positive Christmas of '02. She was 47.