All that pink was not only for cancer awareness, advocates insisted, it was for breast cancer research. But when research finally yielded a result, which was to recommend fewer mammograms, the whole pink bandwagon wailed in defense of its major sponsor!
That would not you madam, standing there dressed to the hilt all pink, but the mammogram/awareness purveyors.
What exactly can they pretend to want by way of research results? Ending cancer is going to mean eventually someone will no longer profit from it.
Spokesmen are scrambling to distance themselves from the new recommendations. Breast cancer survivors are making appearances to decry that they wouldn’t have survived except for the early detection via mammogram. Still none question why they contracted the cancer in the first place. That’s a chief problem I have with the committee’s announcement. Without alluding to the possibility that mammograms may induce breast cancer, the recommendations only suggest that the regular checkups are unnecessary. This leaves plenty of space for the medical industry –should we call it the breast cancer treatment industry?– to caution falsely against a lost stamina for prevention.
Everybody’s problem, it’s broadcast, is that insurers may decide to cut back on their coverage of mammograms. People who may want them, and especially people whose living is made giving them, are worried. So the Surgeon General has spoken out against the recent findings, assuring all that nothing’s changed and mammograms should proceed apace. The committee was only a committee and its recommendations are not binding.
News to me is that regardless of the official line, it’s still up to the health insurance companies to decide what they want to cover. Thus the Surgeon General’s comforting reassurances were only ceremonial edicts as well.
If the recommendations have done their damage, the insurance adjuster can’t be put back in the bag, then why not turn the bag inside out for the silver lining? The good news is that all these years of pink meditation on the problem of breast cancer has for once yielded a result! Stop the unnecessary mammograms. No one is at liberty to say they cause breast cancer because that would be a malpractice genie that no one can afford. Read it between the lines. Reduce the incidence of breast cancer by following the new recommendations.
This is just the first “nudge” that we will be seeing under ObamaCare….getting people to believe that all that early testing, diagnosis and treatment is not really necessary. A great way to save costs (and if they catch it too late to do anything about it, yet another cost-saving benefit!).
Try not to be such a hypocrite, Michael. It’s not like some kind of State Secret that you really don’t give a fat God-Damn about anybody’s health other than your own.
If there had been universally available health care in 1992, my right foot wouldn’t be dead on the end of my leg. AND, the American Taxpayers would have paid maybe 2% of what the results of 14 YEARS of total medical neglect has cost them, so far, in my case alone.
There’s lawyers in America and even in Colorado who have human emotions and concern for others, and social justice, even if it’s only Enlightened Self Interest resulting in such empathy. I know a couple of them personally.
It’s just that you’re not one of them.
Incidentally, Public Option health care was one reason 70 million people voted against the Reaganiite Regime.
That and the lack of empathy that accompanies Money Worship (Capitalism = Idolatry) and the “me me me all about Me it’s the Me show, starring… ME!” attitude that’s necessary to be successful in Capitalism, have trashed the economy of the entire World beyond redemption.
I can’t help but notice (because y’all are so In-Your-Face about it) that those who oppose Health Care are also the ones who oppose ANY way to repair the Economy that doesn’t include giving them even MORE control of the worlds money.
Can we call you “Gordon”?
No, “Gordon” does not suit me, but you are welcome to call me “John Galt”.
If someone asked me if I could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity, the answer would be easy: “the man who uses another’s pity for him as a weapon.”
We all can see clearly now how giving kind-hearted politicians more power has saved the economy. How is that hopey-changey thing working out for you?