Health Insurance and You!

Wherever you go today, the topic of conversation is the new federal guidelines regarding mammograms and self-testing to detect breast cancer. This is a highly charged issue. After all, who doesn’t know someone who has had a brush with this ubiquitous disease? In addition to our reasonable fear of cancer, the discussion is taking place against the backdrop of health reform. Here are the two sides of the conversation.

Testing at 40
Many people are appalled and frightened by the new guidelines. The public has been taught since the beginning of time that women have to conduct monthly self-exams and have annual mammograms starting at the age of 40. We have been told that early detection saves lives. There seems to be no shortage of stories about young women who would have succumbed to the disease had they not found a tumor in a mammogram.
Furthermore, these new guidelines were issued by a federal agency, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, which according to the New York Times, arrived at the exact opposite conclusion after conducting studies only seven years ago. If your life, or the life of someone you love is at stake, why would you take a risk that a few years down the road they will reverse direction again?
Finally, because the recommendations were made by a federal agency people fear that any new government-influenced health care system will not pay for the tests. For more on this go to www.breastcancer.org

Testing at 50
The argument for postponing mammograms and foregoing self-exams seems coolly logical. The efficacy of mammography as a life-saving procedure has been the subject of debate for years. This is not the first study to suggest that mammograms do not save lives. In fact, researchers argue that mammograms cause harm because they force people to undergo an untold number of unnecessary, painful, costly and anxiety-creating procedures for cancers that may not be life-threatening.
Additionally, it is important to remember that the guidelines do not suggest that women who may be deemed at high risk of developing cancer should not be screened early. If a doctor finds that a patient is at risk either from medication, lifestyle, genetic testing or something else, a mammogram can be ordered regardless of the patient’s age.

Patients will be calling their doctors en masse over the next week seeking advice on this subject. You may want to be one of those callers.