Mammograms- New Govt Guidelines - Can't Believe!

I hope the insurance companies do not plan to adopt this guideline for mammograms. I am glad I was  screened at 49 (and yearly since age 41). If I had been screened at 50, I most likely have a very murky future and a harder fight than I did have. They must be crazy and driven by the might dollar!

I started my baseline mammo at 30 due to my aunt having BC, and, I never had children, smoked, was overwieght...etc.    My first cancer was caught at age 39... and could not be felt, it showed on the mammogram... actually as they looked back, they should have seen it the year before at age 38..  this time it was found in a mammo, at age 49...   the government are a bunch of idiots, it sounds like they are  getting ready for a reduction of services for the new health care reform... they will do whatever they can to reduce the cost of the government public option, which soon will probably be our only option as employers are already cutting medical benefits.. just my opinion..

Perhaps MANY MANY of us that are under 50 should stand on their front lawns & flash them our boobless / radiated (burned) / scarred breast as a reminder to them that there are MANY of us that NEEDED those mammos before age 50.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091116/ap_on_he_me/us_med_mammogram_advice       

I think perhaps this is the moment we ask the Forum to help us look into this and then create a Petition. Once one is correctly worded it can be passed along to some of the larger blog & then picked by the larger MSM. First step is to take investigate, find out who we can align ourselves with then get a well worded Petition together.

NINASUZIE wrote: Can you also believe they're saying that Dr. Susan Love AGREES WITH THIS?????

I saw Dr. Love on the NBC nightly news with Brian Williams and couldn't believe her support of the new regulations.  It was all dollars and costs justification!  No mention to the many lives that have been saved by early detection.  How can they say routine breast exams are of no benefit either?  I no longer respect her and will not be involved in her Army of Women campaign. 

Donna

a better link   http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2398452/health_news_new_mammogram_guidelines.html?cat=5 So I'm going to send this link over to FireDogLake Blog as a start. There's a great many women attorneys on the site, the owner is a 3x bc survivor. Hopefully she will do what she does best and that is FIGHT!

I just took Susan Love off my Facebook. Now I'll cancel out ot the AofW too.

Terje, I think you're confusing something here. Health Insurance Companies are businesses. They are responsible to their shareholders, not to the patients, plain and simple. They provide coverage funds after you pay your premiums based on the contracts you sign. They have no obligation to cure you, not one. Your medical team has the obligation to bring their best efforts to bear on curing their patients' ills. Both have the obligation to follow the law and I'll say for my doctors they have also followed their hearts, but as far as the insurance companies their only obligation is to fulfill their contract with you and to pay out monies to your health care provider.

Mainsail, I agree, the insurance companies are businesses are responsible to their shareholders and they also have to follow the laws.

That's why I'm suggesting that the law require them to cover conditions that arise while you're insured and continue to cover those conditions until you are cured of that condition.

To make sure they do their best to cure you, I suggested they add a requirement that all health insurance policies be tied to a life insurance policy.

It's up to use to choose the insurance with the largest life insurance policy tied to it.

In addition I believe we should have a single payer system and that system doesn't need to be perfect. The private health insurance will compete with it. The government run plan won't have the life insurance deal and probably won't cover as many treatments, but it should be free and everyone should qualify.

I actually found a link to a single payer health care plan that I really like on that site you linked me to (the first one), but it doesn't say anything about my two ideas above. I would like those to be included and then I believe it would be the perfect plan. I'm still reading it though. I'm at work now and have the web page open on my home computer. I'll read more tonight.

Edited by Terje - Nov 16 2009 at 10:08pm

Hello All,

I was shocked when I read the new guidelines.  My cancer was diagnosed via a routine mammogram at age 40.  You can bet the insurance companies will be all over this as well as Medicare and Medicaid.  Who's to say who's "high risk"? Perhaps this panel should recommend routine BRCA testing - I don't think that would go over well with the private or govt. payers.

We really do have to do something as a unified group.  We, as TNBC patients/survivors/family members are a unique group in terms of average age at diagnosis and TNBC is so aggressive.  There has been so much press about TNBC lately and good research and now this is like a slap in the face.  When you read the guidelines you can't help but feel that those doing the statistical modeling  view us as nothing more than outliers. Are we really headed for a utilitarian model of health care delivery?

I can't wait to see the guidelines they come up with to determine who is high risk.  Most BCs are not genetic, so will a family history of BC no longer be considered sufficient to warrant mammograms beginning at age 40? What about race? We know that TNBC disproportionately affects minorities but many of us are white, will the guidelines be different for different racial groups? 

I am sorry to go on such a rant - but it's so  upsetting to read that a procedure that saved your life is essentially not cost effective and thus should be discontinued. I understand about false positives and unnecessary anxiety and biopsies, but what is more important, reducing anxiety or reducing cancer deaths? They should be working on more accurate screening techniques and greater access to MRIs for younger women with dense breasts.  Mammograms aren't perfect but until they develop better options they must allow us access to what we have. 

And then, to top it off, they tell women that breast exams, either self or by a doctor are useless.  One doctor who was responding to these guidelines in vehement opposition to them said something like (paraphrasing here) - They are telling women "don't get mammograms, don't do self-breast exams, and don't have your doctor do breast exams".  It's crazy.

Darla