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Breast cancer recommendations: one step up-two steps back
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I can’t help but question the relationship between the new breast cancer screening guidelines that delay screenings for 10 years in women and cut back screening for those women from annual to biannual screenings. Is it good medicine based on research and best practices or is it a sign of things to come as our nation gets closer to the decision to government run healthcare? Limiting and restricting screening that has been considered a best practice for years is one sure fire way to keep costs down on prescreening. What about all the women saved by early detection and screening? Never mind the people that I know on a personal level. Let’s just ponder a moment on all of our American Idols, under the age of 50 that are breast cancer survivors thanks to our commitment to excellence in healthcare. Sheryl Crow, Christina Applegate, Robin Robins and Melissa Etheridge just to name a few. Should they have waited until their 50 for a screening? Surely not –so why should we?
Because women have been in charge of the breast cancer awareness campaign and our desire to eradicate this disease from the planet, women are more educated than ever on an issue that wasn’t even on our radar screen a short 15 years ago. Thanks to the Susan G. Komen foundation, women ban together across our nation to walk on behalf of education, knowledge and awareness in hope that one day the disease will no longer be a threat to our daughters. So now after all this hard work, communication and education – after all that – we are going to take a monumental step backward and change the playbook. I’m not a doctor and I’m not a health care expert but it just doesn’t seem right to me.
One of the biggest arguments for change of our current approach to health insurance is the industry’s “sickness” approach to medical care that provides no process for wellness, active lifestyle and nutrition education. We as a nation do not take care of ourselves and we only go to the doctor when we are sick. This creates more cost for health insurance providers. One of the few things we’ve gotten right over the years is breast cancer prevention and screening. Wellness and prevention of breast cancer starts with early detection, prevention and education. If the new recommendations are adopted as best practices by the health insurance industry –potentially soon to be our government- access to prevention for American women under 50 just went out the window. Let’s not trade off best practices in prevention and care for cost savings on screenings. Bottom line - It’s just not right!
Balancing risk and balancing costs are important aspects in business. Commentary on www.breastcancer.org indicates that the findings of the U.S. Preventative Task Force, the group that conducted the study, indicate that their recommendations would yield only a 3% increase in breast cancer death among women. Excuse me?! As far as I’m concerned, that is going backwards. It’s a far cry from the “Race for the Cure” vision of the Susan G. Komen foundation to “once and for all achieve our vision of a world without breast cancer.”
Let’s continue to demand policies that advocate and support moving forward with saving lives of our mother’s, grandmothers’, sisters and daughters. Let’s not take this step backward. It is one of the few things we have right when it comes to healthcare today.
Resources:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704538404574539971868397840.html
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