Washington Independent: House and Senate Health Care Bills Would Automatically Adopt Task Force Mammogram Recommendations
The Democrats downplaying the gravity of new recommendations for breast cancer screening have left out an inconvenient fact: their health care bills would automatically adopt them.
Both the House and Senate health reform proposals would force insurance plans to follow the new mammogram guidelines for women ages 50 to 74 as part of a minimum swath of services deemed by the legislation to be medically essential. The recommendations were an unexpected wildcard in the middle of an already contentious health reform debate, and they’ve caused Democrats to de-emphasize their significance at the same time that some in the party are calling for a legislative fix to nullify them.
The animated reaction to the recommendations follows several weeks in which women’s reproductive health had been at the forefront of the health reform debate, after the House passed a provision limiting coverage of abortion under private plans. The saga has been a distraction to Democrats as they aim to enact the most sweeping health care reform in generations, and it’s complicated their defense against GOP-fueled charges that their proposals would lead to a rationing of care. House leaders have already passed their version of the bill, but the debate in the Senate is just beginning, with upper-chamber leaders scheduled to vote Saturday on a procedural measure to bring their bill to the floor.
The mammogram episode has also revealed the influence of a previously obscure preventive-medicine panel, raised questions about the effectiveness of the Democrats’ reform proposals to weed out unnecessary medical procedures, and highlighted the potential complications when the entrenched habits of patients and providers are called into question by medical science. [more...]