While the flap appeared to have calmed down over the new mammogram guidelines, the fallout is still with us. Final health care legislation will include a mandate for coverage that ignores the new guidelines. This is a result of pressure from women’s groups, some doctors, the American Cancer Society, equipment manufacturers and others to leave the current guidelines in place. Nobody is capable of being objective in this situation as there are so many self serving incentives from donations to non-profit organizations by equipment makers, to the obvious interests of radiologists.
Politicians respond to the pressure because the ability to argue in favor of the new guidelines is nonexistent, you can never err on being too cautious and that is the perception of the American people. Cost and even potential personal harm as issues to consider evaporate under the pressure as well. We are left with the flaws in the current system plus the added element of federal control over every decision to be made. If you are looking for objectivity and logic in health care decision-making, you are not going to find it; we have locked that already closed door when we opened health care to the chambers of Congress.
The issues we face are not about mammograms, but rather our inability to be objective and free of self-serving influences when making these decisions. Government and industry-funded studies of any kind will come under increased scrutiny from the left and right depending on one’s point of view. In addition, we will be further hampered in our ability to see that a third party not paying for a procedure does not mean we cannot have the service at our own cost. In other words, insulation from the cost of health care and the accompanying result has been politicized more than ever before.
Mammograms is only the first of an endless stream of health care debates that will hamper progress in health care, add to costs and possibly diminish the quality of health care in America.
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