Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are blasting new guidelines from a government task force that recommends against routine mammograms for women under 50, questioning whether they are tantamount to health care “rationing” in the fight against the No. 2 cancer killer in U.S. women.
“I absolutely believe this could be a form of rationing,” said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga, a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist for 26 years. “It scares me.”
Gingrey told FoxNews.com on Tuesday that he and other lawmakers are gravely concerned that insurance companies will seize upon the new guidelines to deny mammogram coverage for women under 50.
“Early detection is hugely important,” Gingrey said. “As a husband of 39 years and the father of three grown daughters, self-breast examinations are hugely important.”
The new government recommendations, released Monday by the Preventive Services Task Force of the Department of Health and Human Services, recommend against regular mammography tests in women aged 40 to 49. The guidelines also downplay the effectiveness of self-examinations and advise that women aged 50 to 74 years receive mammograms every other year.
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Notes:
I saw the story this morning but skipped it because I wanted to see what the reaction would be later in the day. Apparently not good if you tend to watch Fox News. Look for this Obama initiative to explode in the next few days.
Didn’t Sarah say this somewhere?
I think so and the media beat her up for it. Today the media is screaming “” No — No – we didn’t mean that.”
But they did didn’t they?
Anything to cut the almighty dollar and make Obama’s dream come true. And so we see Sarah’s warning appear.
It is to wonder.
I thought the whole concept of Obamacare was to make sure everyone got healthcare. Go figure.
I heard Limbaugh going on about this earlier this afternoon and true to form he gave me my chuckle for the day (really, I sometimes find that sort of hyper-partisan B/S utterly laughable) - my first thought was, “I suppose the medical establishment here stating that children really don’t need that second 1/2 H1N1 shot is Canadian healthcare rationing“.
Maybe I should do up a post on my site about Canadian federal healthcare rationing of swine flu vaccine and link that Fox article — it might be worth a laugh.
Geez, if you send that to Fox, Stageleft – I can just see their head lines now ’Canada saves pigs from Swine flu while Canada cant find enough flu vaccines for their citizens.’
And you know whats coming next ’Its all the fault of Canada’s ‘Universal Health Care’