Healthcare rationing begins: government releases new mammogram guidelines

  I made the argument previously, after hearing an old man telling another man that his doctor denied him the Swine flu vaccine because of his age, that the healthcare rationing that can be expected once the government controls healthcare has already begun.

  Maybe I was over-reacting to one old man’s story, but then again maybe I wasn’t. Maybe that was the beginning of healthcare rationing after all. And in light of the new government released guidelines on mammograms I have to wonder if the rationing of healthcare is about to kick into high gear.

  According to the government’s findings, women should not receive their first mammogram until the age of fifty, ten full years after the current age of recommendation. Is this being done as a purely cost cutting measure? It would seem so, after all let us not ever forget that Obama once said instead of giving an old man a pacemaker he may be sent home with an aspirin under his healthcare plan.

  The cost cutting has to come from somewhere if we are to add 40 million people to the system and this could be the opening salvo. Am I over-reacting to this? I don’t think so, the most troubling part to me is that the government agency that released this report is also telling women not to self-examine themselves because it might cause them undo anxiety.

  What could possibly be wrong with a woman checking herself for lumps other than the fact that if she finds something she will go to the doctor and it will cost money that wouldn’t have been spent if she had not checked herself?

  Throughout the presidential campaign and the healthcare debate it has been argued that Americans need to get healthier and need to do more to prevent a possible traumatic health event from occurring in their lives. We have been told that a key element to bringing down healthcare costs would be to do more to prevent something from happening rather than treat it after it happened.

  But now we have the government telling women that there is no need to worry about self-examinations and preventive care and early detection. This seems to be at odds with what we have been told about healthcare.

  It seems to me that the government has decided to cut down on a procedure that they find too costly, but the only thing that this could cut down on is the survival rate of those with breast cancer. We have been told for years that the key to breast cancer survival, and all cancer for that matter, is early detection but now the government is telling us not to worry about it; it may cause too much anxiety.

  I just find it too much of a coincidence that in the middle of the healthcare debate we have a government panel suddenly claiming that American women are doing too much to make sure they don’t get cancer. This sure seems like the beginning of rationing to me.

  Are we suddenly going to see more reports from this panel claiming that Americans are going overboard on preventative maintenance? I wouldn’t be surprised.

  The rationing of healthcare to cut down on the costs may have already begun.