Earlier this week, The Foundry’s Conn Carroll wrote that under the Senate’s version of Obamacare, insurers and employers would have justification to refuse coverage for annual mammograms as a cost-cutting rationing measure, pursuant to the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
On Sunday’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” the debate on mammogram rationing grew heated when Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) explained that the Task Force’s guidelines on mammograms “become the law” under the Senate bill, meaning that rationing would occur. In response, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) accused Republicans of politicizing the issue of breast cancer.
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) noted that while a “cost” argument for the guidelines could be made, “from a patient standpoint, they’re atrocious. And that’s the problem with a bureaucracy stepping between a physician and their patient.”
As Caroll wrote:
[W]hen the Obamacare health experts conclude that the “medical science” dictates that your mammograms must be cut to meet “the goal of … lowering costs,” then you’ll be out of luck.
