“Everyone has been trying to come up with a good nickname for the 10 years we’re concluding next month. Terror Era really sounds like too much of a downer. How about the Decade of Medical Backtracking?”
Gail Collins on The Breast Brouhaha. Recommended reading.
I just came from my annual exam, and I thought my doc was going to stroke out discussing the subject.
Her best line? “They’re claiming it’s not worthwhile because they only encounter one true positive in every 900 exams? So what? So there are 899 negatives. Are we not better safe than sorry–or dead? Say it’s $200 a test. A woman’s life is not worth $180K? How much does our government spend in Iraq every single day?”
This from the mouth of a 60 year old Chinese woman who pinches pennies until they scream (seriously, shell out for cloth robes, Dr. Chang).
I’ll continue having my mammogram every year as I always have, thanks.
Oh, what perfect timing! Now that the healthcare debate is in flux, they’ve just given the insurance companies a great excuse not to cover mammograms for women under fifty.
I think the best description for the 2000’s would be “The Dysfunctional Decade”. The years when all bets were off, when a lot of the strengths that Americans used to count on in our society just came apart. The government failed to protect us right on our own turf, started a pre-emptive war with the wrong country, with no way out, let a city drown, let the banksters run amok who nearly caused a worldwide depression, allowed corporations to buy government policy, etc, etc.
How dysfunctional is it to be the only industrialized nation not to have socialized medicine? What we have on the table now is simply a giveaway to the insurance corporations. Socialized medicine? No. Corporate welfare? Whatever makes the lobbyists happy.
The motto of the 2000’s? “Privatize the Profits, Socialize the Losses”.
Boy, Dr. Chang has a good practice. She gets to tell only one in nine hundred of her patients bad news.
That’s WAY less than other kinds of doctor’s experience.
Yes, Ephraim. We all–Dr. Chang and the rest of us, as well–say a daily prayer of thanks that breast cancer is the only threat to a woman’s health/life!
I wonder how long before they tell us not to bother with PAP smears and annual gynecological health exams?
The answer to your question:
One day!
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2009/11/women_can_wait_on_pap_smears.html