A federal government panel recommended no mammograms until a woman is 50. Only 1 in 1,900 women would die from breast cancer under this approach. This the first step toward rationing mammograms. I figure the government could save $3.8 billion if women wait until they are 50 to get mammograms. That is what Obamacare is all about: Saving money, not lives.For a nation so obsessed by breast cancer every October (I've written about that before here and here), this is a change in policy that should be nearly universally opposed. This isn't a right versus left issue, but a right versus wrong issue.
Of course, 10,000 women would die of breast cancer to pay for those savings.
Liberals like Katie Couric are putting aside their pink ribbons to defend a policy move that they would have railed against if it had been suggested by a task force under a Republican president.
Couric wrote: “The reasons make sense. Roughly ninety percent of abnormal screenings are ultimately benign. These false alarms lead to invasive tests and major anxiety, not to mention billions of dollars of unnecessary care.
“Still, those mammograms could save the life of one woman in 1,900 hundred. If she happens to be your daughter, your mother, your wife — or you — that’s the only statistic that will matter.”
Opponents to Obamacare need to shout this long and loud as the debate in the Senate gets underway. This is what rationing will look like, and although the term "death panel" is mocked and scorned, having these types of health care decisions made by a bunch of clerks who are only interested in the financial bottom line could certainly make the mockery come to life.
Posts
1 comment:
The primary problem of health care operated by the government is that the defacto administrators are clerks who when they must make a decision look to a table and find the answer by row and column lookup. Not much thought in that operation.
Althought the administration is making all sorts of sounds about keeping private company insurance, they insist that a government option is required to reduce costs. That may be true until the private companies cannot make any profit and shut down. Then the clerks take over!
Post a Comment