One of the hallmark tactics from opponents of health insurance reform has been to grab onto any convenient piece of information and twist it into some misguided attack on reform, no matter how unrelated it may actually be. The hope appears to be that some media outlet will give them unchecked airtime under the banner of covering the “controversy.” Today they’re going back to that playbook again, and Fox News obliges them with the headline “Critics See Health Care Rationing Behind New Mammography Recommendations.” The story refers to new recommendations from the independent U.S. Preventive Services Task Force:
"Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill are blasting new guidelines from a government task force that recommends against routine mammographies for women under 50, questioning whether they are tantamount to health care ‘rationing’ in the fight against the No. 2 cancer killer in U.S. women."
There’s only one problem: the recommendations of this task force would actually be used to provide access to effective preventive services for free or at low-cost. The USPTF would have no power to deny insurance coverage in any way. The line of attack is actually somewhat ironic, because one of the guiding principles of reform from the very beginning in March has been to invest in significantly increased effective preventive care, something these “critics” never seemed to care much about over the past 8 months.
Just so there’s no ambiguity, here are the answers to about every question you (or “critics”) might have on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force:
Read on.
1 comment:
Just think of all the money insurance companies will save by not having women get mammograms.
Hmm....makes you wonder who is it good for? Who benefits the most?
Post a Comment