Following days of uproar after a federal government panel told fortysomething American women that regular mammogram screening doesn't save enough of their lives to justify the costs or the "anxiety" caused by biopsies and additional tests (which don't often result in a cancer diagnosis), the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services yesterday told everyone to basically ignore the new guidelines.
Maybe all those women who said their cancers were detected through routine screenings when they were in their 40s and said they would've been dead if they'd waited until age 50 -- as the new panel suggests women now do -- had an impact. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement released yesterday:
"The task force has presented some new evidence for consideration but our policies remain unchanged. Indeed I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action."
Given that during his speech to a joint session of Congress earlier fall President Obama said that under his health care reform plan ". . . [I]nsurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives," it would be nice for the federal government to send a consistent message and not tell people that preventive care is important, then recommend that they not get it.
In the meantime, USA Today reported today that major health insurance company spokespeople are saying that they won't stop covering mammograms for women in their 40s as a result of the US Preventive Services Task Force guidelines:
"Some of the companies that told USA TODAY that they will continue paying for mammograms for women in their 40s include Kaiser Permanente, Aetna, Cigna, Geisinger Health Plan, Group Health Cooperative and WellPoint, which operates Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans in 14 states. Together, these plans cover more than 73 million people.
A spokeswoman for Kaiser Permanente, Farra Levin, says, 'We believe that focusing on prevention and early detection is critical in improving women's health and saving lives.'"
So that means that saving the lives of fortysomething women IS worth the cost of mammograms?
You've likely all heard about it by now. A U.S. congressman yelled, "You lie!" to President Obama during his health care reform address to a joint session of Congress this week. A classless move to be certain. Even my three grade school-aged kids were surprised that someone like a congressman would do something like that in a forum such as that.
But instead of saying all the things many people are already thinking, I decided to let David Letterman's Top Ten list do the heavy lifting on this one.
On the speech last night that President Obama gave to a joint session of Congress, I'm going to quote the Washington Post'sTom Shales:
"Obama came across like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: a bright-eyed young idealist up against entrenched power, old ideas and obstructionism.
It was also a chance for Obama to go on national television and look presidential again, asserting himself in ways that helped make up for the past few months of perceived defensiveness, of appearing to kowtow to other powers, and of seeming to do more following than leading."
I think the comparison to Stewart is apt. As an event of pure political theater, Obama was blunt, eager, tough and idealistic and seemed to grab the debate by the lapels and provide overarching themes with which most reasonable people -- Republican or Democrat -- would agree. Who thinks you should be banned from obtaining health coverage because you have a pre-existing condition? Who thinks American families should be bankrupted by their health care bills? Who thinks it's morally right for folks to be unceremoniously dropped by their health insurance company -- even though they diligently paid their premiums and deductibles -- when someone covered by their health insurance policy gets sick, or whose medical bills exceed a cap the insurance company has placed upon the family? I doubt you're going to find folks willing to say that all of those things are okay with them. (And if you do, it'll likely be someone named Mr. Potter, who had a run-in with Jimmy Stewart in another film, It's a Wonderful Life.)
When the president spoke of not adding "a dime to the deficit" with this new health care reform proposal, that he'd ask for a provision to be included in a bill to implement cuts if the promised millions in savings didn't materialize as he believed they would, those are sentiments around which most folks can rally.
The problem is, that's what they are, notions. We have no idea if they're going to eventually be true, no matter how much the president may want them to be because, lest we forget, he's not the one who makes laws. That's Congress' messy, messy, horse-trading job. What if the not "a dime to the deficit" has to be sacrificed in some deal to secure a bill's passage? Then Obama will have made a promise that Democratic senators and congressmen and women couldn't keep.
I went to the US Senate and House web sites and found links to two seemingly prominent versions of health care reform bills -- HR 3200 at 1,017 pages, the Senate bill passed by the Senate Committee on Health at 839 pages -- and haven't yet plowed through them.
Simply put, I'm left wondering what health care reform would really look like beyond the sweeping statements; the outcome of such reform would be very personal because it involves my family's health care. While some people may have liked the sound of the things the president is saying in general about the overhaul of one-sixth of the U.S. economy, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty implementation people, those for and against reform, get wary.
When President Obama last night said "significant details need to be worked out," laughter could be heard, only the president wasn't laughing. What's that old adage, the devil is in the details?
This, in case anyone was wondering, is a non-Gosselin edition of Suburban Mom's Pop Culture. There's only so much of Jon & Kate that I can handle in one week, thank you very much . . .
TV
Who out there is planning to watch the presidential address to a joint session of Congress tonight? I'll be there, in front of the TV -- likely tuned to NBC's Brian Williams, love Brian -- with an open mind and ready to listen. On Thursday, I'll be ready to analyze. One thing I can't stand, though, about these addresses, is the repeated jumping out of one's seating and clapping all the time. Drives me nuts.
From the commander in chief addressing Congress to a male prostitute. There's just no good segue here . . . I've been ODing on HBO's new comedy Hung, about the down-on-his-luck high school teacher/basketball coach/divorced father of two teens Ray Drecker who turns to high-priced prostitution -- calls himself a "happiness consultant" -- to pay his bills and get the funds to fix his home which was partially ruined by fire. (He didn't have the cash to pay his home owner's insurance premiums and let the policy lapse, so now he's living in a tent next to the house.)
After I've seen the season finale (airs Sunday night), I'll devote a separate blog item to the show. It's mighty quirky, in a Weeds sort of way. I love the dynamic between the main character and his pimp Tanya, a confidence-craving poet who has worked at a temp job in a law firm for more years than she'd care to admit.
Books/Magazines
I finished Julie Powell's book Julie & Juliaon Monday, upon which half of the movie of the same name is based. I was entertained throughout, though the sections on Powell cooking organ meat curdled my stomach. (When I told my 11-year-old son about the chapter on cooking brains -- given, we were at the dinner table at the time -- he curtly thanked me for killing his appetite.) A great number of the events which occurred in Powell's life during the year in which she was cooking her way through Julia Child's first book and blogging about it were omitted from the film, so reading this helped fill in the blanks. Once I completed Julie & Julia, I moved on to finally cracked open Jack Kerouac's On the Road. I'm just at the very beginning though. Never read Kerouac. Have no idea what to expect.
After sitting unloved on my desk for a while, Wired Magazine'slatest issue has been beckoning me. Meanwhile, I enjoyed basking in the Beatles Mania in this week's Entertainment Weekly and harassing my kids by singing tidbits of Beatles songs at random moments.
Movies/DVDs
This week I watched the first DVD in the first season for The West Wing. God did watching that show that bring me right back to the 1990s, before people were using BlackBerries or doing things like Twittering and Facebooking. It's almost charming to hear people mention faxes, which aren't used like they were when this show began. I fondly remembered Leo, Sam, Josh and C.J., and realized I'd forgotten how sanctimonious Jed Bartlett could be. The discs for the remainder of the award-winning freshman season are on my Netflix queue. Can't wait. (And no, I haven't watched Milk yet, which I've had for some time from Netflix, sitting next to the TV.)
The Spouse and I did, however, watch Flash of Geniusover the weekend starring Greg Kinnear and Lauren Graham. Aside from production/film issues (the camera would sometimes move awkwardly, almost jarringly, and some of the clothing did NOT appear period, maybe I've been spoiled by the anal retentive Mad Men folks) I found the tale of inventor/college professor Robert Kearns getting screwed by the Ford Motor Company after they stole his invention, bittersweet. The drama peaked when Kearns wouldn't drop his lawsuit against Ford, even with his family, his job and his sanity at stake. If this had been made 40-50 years ago, I can imagine someone like Jimmy Stewart in the lead role, of the little guy getting taken by the big, expensive-suited power brokers.
