Health Rationing, Part I

So it begins: Mammogram Recommendations Could Reverse Years of Progress

I'm upset about the controversial decision by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force—an agency appointed by HHS, the federal department at the center of healthcare reform—to recommend that women not begin regular mammograms until age 50, and even then, only every two years.

The breast cancer awareness lobby in the United States has spent years convincing women that we must get checked early and often for breast cancer. It's just what you do: Every year I get my teeth cleaned (twice), I get a Pap smear and a mammogram, and get my cholesterol checked. It's part of being a grownup. It's as if they came out and said that seat belts in cars really aren't necessary anymore, or that it's okay for pregnant women to drink tequila again.

According to the New York Times: "The task force concluded that one cancer death is prevented for every 1,904 women age 40 to 49 who are screened for 10 years, compared with one death for every 1,339 women age 50 to 59, and one death for every 377 women age 60 to 69."

No one wants to be the one woman—the one mom, sister, daughter, or friend—whose death was preventable. Who wants to take that chance?

Well, the Obama administration wants women to take that chance, particularly poor women. After all, Obama and Co. will need all the money they can get to prop up GM (and other losers) for the indefinite future. What are a few thousand poor women worth in the grand scheme of things?

This hits, in a way, pretty close to home. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 43 years old, seven years earlier then the Obama administration wants women screened for the disease. Now, to be fair, my mother discovered her tumor through her self breast exam. However, my mother is also a registered nurse, who can be expected to be much more proficient than the average woman in giving self examinations. For many women, having a mammogram is the best, and maybe only, chance they will have to catch the disease early. When you consider that younger women have less chance of surviving breast cancer since the forms they tend to get are more aggressive to begin with, this policy is fraught with negative consequences.

And it is exactly the sort of policy we can expect when government bean counters come between us and our doctors.