GOPers Scream ‘Rationing,’ Don’t Endorse Bill Ensuring Mammograms

[babylonsister]

http://washingtonindependent.com/68547/republicans-blast-new-mammogram-guidelines-but-havent-supported-bill-ensuring-screenings

GOPers Scream ‘Rationing,’ Don’t Endorse Bill Ensuring Mammograms
By Mike Lillis 11/20/09 12:35 PM


Republicans on Capitol Hill were sure quick to go after the new federal guidelines recommending that women should seek routine mammograms beginning at age 50 instead of 40. “This is how rationing begins,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “This is when you start getting a bureaucrat between you and your physician. This is what we have warned about.”

Blackburn was joined by GOP Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), Sue Myrick (N.C.), Candice Miller (Mich.), Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Jean Schmidt (Ohio).

Funny, though, that none of the participants has signed on in support of legislation to ensure that all women aged 40 and up have access to routine mammograms. That bill, sponsored by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), would require insurance companies that cover diagnostic mammograms also to cover routine, annual breast cancer screenings for all women 40 and older.

Only one Republican, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), is among the 79 co-sponsors of Nadler’s bill.

The message from the Republicans seems to be: We’re wary of the government recommending fewer tests based on independent research, but it’s OK for private insurance companies, driven by profit motives, to deny access to the same services.

[HopeHoops]

1. FUCK that noise! Mammograms are one of the LEAST EXPENSIVE tests.

The bullshit about unnecessary biopsies is ancient history. The new technology has a very low false positive rate. The GOP is just anti-female.

BC/BS and several other insurance companies have already announced that they are sticking to the old guidelines for coverage.

[FarCenter]

6. Actually, mammograms seem to be expensive

According to http://www.costhelper.com/cost/health/mammogram.html the price to a woman without insurace coverage should be between $80 and $212.

However, read the comments. Many are billed lots more than that.

It looks like mammograms are quite a profit center for doctors, imaging clinics, and hospitals. Which may explain a lot of the negative reaction to the recommendation.

[HopeHoops]

8. As far as tests go, that's chicken shit. Compare it to an MRI.

They may be a profit center, but cost-wise they are about as cheap as you get. Blood work can cost more than that!

[Overseas]

2. K&R! Great point! They're spouting the talking points but taking no action

to ensure that those regular preventative tests become a guaranteed part of health care reform.

Next is the pap smear spacing out recommendation. More outrage. More claims of "Aha! This is how rationing begins!"

If the right wing PR firms funded by the private insurance industry had waited longer, their desire to use the reports for anti-reform talking points would have been less obvious.

Highlighting these votes by the same legislators complaining about rationing is a great thing. Let us see how concerned they really are.

[babylonsister]

5. The hypocrisy, again. Sickening, isn't it. nt

[fascisthunter]

3. yes... let women get cancer

weird as greed freaks

[StarfarerBill]

4. There can be no more effective rationing of health care...

...than the status quo (a minimum for those who can pay, none at all for those who can't pony up), which the Republicans' continued slaving for the industry in Congress will if not perpetuate then at least minimize reform's effects on.

[FarCenter]

7. All of them members of the panel making the recommendations were Bush administration appointees

[MattBaggins]

9. The very panel was just a front for the Insurance Companies

Makes you wonder if they intentionally manufactured the recommendation just to generate outrage and suspicion about the health care bill.