Mammography recommendation, retraction?

Source: Associated Press; The Wall Street Journal

It seems like just last week (okay so it was 3 weeks ago) that I was blogging on the newly announced recommendations relative to mammography.  http://www.medicalmalpracticelawyerblogphiladelphia.com/?p=439

I also suggested that there were larger forces at work behind such things as US Preventative Services Task Force recommendations which surface during governmental debates on health care and which represent a swing in a particular direction.

So you don’t think I’ve put on my tinfoil hat and gone all “Olver Stone” on you, the “Task Force” responsible for the recommendations has now been summoned to testify before the US Congress. Oooh. What did they say? What did they say?

Well, the Task Force acknowledged that ACOG (the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists) expressed concern that the panel’s recommendations might be misunderstood by clinicians, patients, policy makers and insurers (funny, no mention of trial lawyers) and said, “Our message was misunderstood.”

So that’s their story. They were “misunderstood.”  They were NOT trying to create some sort of political expediency whereby women under 50 were denied routine mammography as a cost saving measure for the government and for insurers.

Oh and from my prior blog post, the one where I wrote, “That aside, anticipate the pro-mammography lobby to push for a formal adoption/return to the 40 and over recommendation for various reasons both medical and economic.”  Radiologists affiliated with Harvard and UC Irvine have spoken out that adopting the newer guidelines would result in increased deaths and negate the gains made over the past 20 years.

Still think medicine isn’t a business?

~Posted by David Marc Schwadron, Esquire