Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity link nonbinding mammogram guidelines to "death panels"
Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity have linked a task force's recommendation that fewer women younger than 50 receive regular mammograms to the widely debunked smear that Democratic health reform bills include "death panels." Right-wing media figures have repeatedly raised the specter of these purported panels in their discussions of health care; in this case, their fearmongering is undermined by the fact that the recommendations are not legally binding on health care providers or insurers.
Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity all link nonbinding task force recommendations to the "death panels" falsehood
Beck referred to "some crazy skeptics still worried about potential rationing, so-called death panels," and then proceeded to discuss the task force's mammogram recommendations. During the November 18 broadcast of his Fox News program, Beck said, "The health care reform debate continues. Some crazy skeptics still worried about potential rationing, so-called death panels, Sarah Palin." Beck continued: "In a totally unrelated matter, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force has seemingly done a 180-degree turn in the last six months" and then discussed the recommendations.
Limbaugh: "You might even say that we've got death panels going on here." During the November 18 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh discussed the recommendations and stated, "You might even say that we've got death panels going on here."
Hannity adds "death panels" to his fearmongering over the mammogram recommendation. On his November 18 radio show, Hannity continued to fearmonger over the task force recommendations, stating: "Is this a death panel, ladies and gentlemen? I mean for women who don't get mammograms. What does that mean? That means we're not going to have the early detection."
Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity join right-wing media's fearmongering over the task force recommendations. Numerous conservatives in the media, including Fox News contributors Dr. Marc Siegel and Dr. Keith Ablow -- in addition to Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity -- have fearmongered that the task force recommendations are a part of government rationing under health care reform.
Rationing claim undermined: Task force recommendations not legally binding
Task force did not recommend blanket ban on mammograms for women under 50. The task force issued a grade C recommendation "against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years" and stated that "[t]he decision to start regular, biennial screening mammography before the age of 50 years should be an individual one and take into account patient context, including the patient's values regarding specific benefits and harms." As a grade C recommendation, clinicians are counseled to "[o]ffer or provide this service only if other considerations support the offering or providing the service in an individual patient."
Task force encouraged policymakers to include additional considerations and "individualize decision making to the specific patient or situation." In publishing its updated recommendations in The Annals of Internal Medicine, the task force acknowledged that other considerations should be included in determining what preventive treatment to provide, stating, "The USPSTF recognizes that clinical or policy decisions involve more considerations than this body of evidence alone. Clinicians and policymakers should understand the evidence but individualize decision making to the specific patient or situation."
NBC's Snyderman: "It's important to remember that these new recommendations from this independent task force are just that -- they're recommendations." In a Nightly News report on the task force recommendations, NBC chief medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman stated, "It's important to remember that these new recommendations from this independent task force are just that -- they're recommendations. They don't mandate any changes in who should get mammograms and when." [NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams, 11/17/09]
Right-wing media have repeatedly revived debunked "death panel" claim
Fox News personalities advance Palin's "death panel" claim. In an August 7 Facebook posting, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin claimed that under Democratic health care reform, "Obama's 'death panel' " would "decide" whether her parents or her son Trig, who has Down syndrome, were "worthy of health care." Over the following days, several Fox News anchors, hosts, and contributors adopted Palin's "death panel" term or advanced or expressed support for her assertion -- which is based on the widely debunked claim that the House health care reform bill would require end-of-life counseling. Media Matters for America subsequently identified more than 40 instances of media reporting that these claims are false.
Fox News uses "death book" lie to revive "death panels" lie. Following several days in which Fox News promoted the smear that an educational booklet on end-of-life decisions used by the Veterans Health Administration is a "death book," on August 24, Fox News host Megyn Kelly and Fox News contributor Jonah Goldberg used a discussion about the booklet to revive the falsehood that Democratic health care reform legislation would institute "death panels." Kelly also falsely claimed that the booklet encourages veterans to "hurry up and die" and that VHA officials are "required" to refer patients to it.
Right-wing outlets used AP article about Medicare coverage for voluntary end-of-life counseling to resurrect "death panel" myth. Linking to an October 30 Associated Press article about Medicare coverage for voluntary end-of-life counseling in the House health care bill, conservative media outlets such as Fox News and BigGovernment.com featured misleading headlines to revive the widely debunked "death panel" smear. Fox News' Peter Johnson Jr. also stated during an interview with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), "So with regard to the death panel, nothing much has changed."
Yet there is a proposal for a panel to make 'best practices'. Congress can then accept or reject the whole of those recommendation per the proposal.
More frightening is that the bureaucracy cant even decide, whoch would leave the issue in limbo.
No government control of health care requires that government money stay out.
Remember the golden rule-- he who has the gold makes the rules...
That's right, and I would rather have a government bureaucrat making a decision than a insurance company bureaucrat looking at his year bonus or stock price.
most of the population prefer making their own decision.
Just tell me what entitlement program has the federal government EVER run successfully? OK what program has the government ever run successfully. Oh perhaps the Manhattan Project... bout it...
But then again, I wouldn't expect you to understand that.
Remember, the NIH and CDC are part of the government too.
When you read the task force's assessment, it's actually quite complex and, IMO, compelling. I don't think that they were desiring some particular result.
http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/uspstf09/breastcancer/brcanart.htm
Lastly, there are "NO" death panel or mammogram wordings in the ENTIRE HealthCare Reform Bill.
2. More mammography for women between the ages of 40-49 means exposing the average woman to more radiation than necessary and more unwarranted biopsies since the breast tissue of these younger, mostly pre-menopausal women is harder to see into and through. 1 in 69 women between 40 and 49 gets cancer. That means that to detect cancer in that one woman, we're exposing 68 women to excess radiation and quite a few biopsies for no good reason - whose to say that the excessive radiation might not lead to cancer in one of those women later in life?
3. This finding had nothing to do with rationing of care.
2. Clearly you don't understand x-rays. Yes there is radiation involved but with the advent of digital x-rays, CX or DX, the amount of radiation is negligible, the images are better. "excessive radiation" is another of those fear mongering words thrown out to cause panic and well fear.. And it's a bunch of bunk... pathetic.
3. This so called "finding" is another example, like the huge lines for swine flu vaccinations, of what we will see under nobamacare, incremental-ism at it's finest. Well the real trick is the incorporation of "This is why we need healthcare reform" into almost every TV program (like Law and Order). pathetic.... Why oh why hasn't the American Cancer Society made the same "recommendation". I'll go with them thank you....
NBC's Snyderman: "It's important to remember that these new recommendations from this independent task force are just that -- they're recommendations." In a Nightly News report on the task force recommendations, NBC chief medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman stated, "It's important to remember that these new recommendations from this independent task force are just that -- they're recommendations. They don't mandate any changes in who should get mammograms and when." [NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams, 11/17/09]
Whats pathetic is You and other cons shilling for big insurance.
They are currently reevaluating how best to present the benfits of screening.
Have you found yourself in the position of discussing 'end of life' options with a physician or surgeon? If not, then I believe you simply have no idea of what it is you are parroting. As someone who has had the discussion regarding both parents and living through both of their deaths, there is/was NOTHING "death panel-ish" about them. Making decisions of such utmost importance at times BEFORE they are necessary is a good thing. These discussions are already in place and are nothing new. More fear-mongering ... for shame.
So I'm reading all these stories and saying, "Where's the data about the risk from radiation?"
I finally found this important (and missing) piece of the puzzle in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Radiation causes 1 death for every 2,000 women screened annually starting at age 40, according to a study published in 2005 in the British Journal of Cancer. Another study shows that each mammogram increases the risk of breast cancer by 2 percent. Mammography also saves women's lives, so that's why it's a trade-off.
Here's some more info from Respectful Insolence, a medical research blog.
Got that? Statistically, some women have approximately as much chance of getting breast cancer from a mammogram as they have of it saving their lives. That's why it's considered a policy wash.
Yes, you might be one of those rare women saved by early detection. But you might also be someone who develops breast cancer from the yearly radiation exposure.
By the way, the policy change recommendation doesn't apply to women with symptoms. It's for screening mammograms only, not the diagnostic kind.
UPDATE: Sebelius tells women to "ignore" the recommendation. How about we give women all the information - and let them decide?
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/why-new-mammogram-recommendation-real
THANK YOU!! Brilliant suggestion!
I agree with DellDolly about the exposure to radiation. I get pretty frequent chest x-rays and CTs because I have both heart and lung problems so I tend to shy away from any extra radiation if I don;t see it as necessary.
I think may people misunderstand the 'best practices' language. Those boards would not be making mandatory standards. The would be taking the time to study outcomes statistically and give doctors another source of information for treatment options.
Hear we go on the "excessive exposure" to radiation. One CT scan will expose you to more radiation then annual mammograms will for the rest of your life...
Here's the "best practices" rub. What are called "best practices" will become the standard under government controlled health care. Even if the "best practices" are wrong.
Yes, but the overriding society that they listen to is the stock market.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/9/californias_real_death_panels_data_reveals
Here are some excerpts from the above linked interview :
CHARLES IDELSON: Well, this is data that the insurance companies have always wanted to hide, and it’s just now become available. It documents that the insurance companies have denied, in California alone, 45 million claims since 2002, and in the first half of this year alone, their rates continue to skyrocket. Some of these rates ranged as high as 40 percent for UnitedHealthcare’s PacifiCare. And other large, giant insurers like Blue Cross, Health Net, CIGNA, Kaiser were all in the range of 30 percent. So it shows a clear pattern of very high denials by the very insurance companies that people depend upon to assure that they get care they need when they need it..."
and from the same link a women who lost her daughter fighting with CIGNA(I guess CIGNA didn't want to shoot themselves in the foot)
AMY GOODMAN: What’s happening?
HILDA SARKISYAN: Well, we miss her. We don’t have our beautiful daughter with us anymore. And CIGNA is doing this every day, every day. And that’s why I’m out there to help other families to stop them. It’s not only CIGNA; it’s all the insurance industry, that they are placing profit before patient, and it’s not right. And they are enforcing the care of people, not their—you know, they should not enforce the care of the people to their deep pockets. It’s all about their pocket, all about the CEO, how much he makes. I miss my daughter. I had a beautiful, perfect daughter. I don’t have her anymore. I don’t.
AMY GOODMAN: Hilda, describe what happened to your daughter.
HILDA SARKISYAN: Well, we had insurance. We were covered. We thought we had insurance. So it’s like having insurance and not having insurance is the same thing. People who have insurance and don’t have it, they get the same care. But having insurance and knowing that you do have it, and you are recommended to a certain hospital, because the insurance company only pays if you go to that hospital, you go to that hospital, which in our case was UCLA. We were transferred there. By the way, that’s our fourth hospital within, I would say, three years, because they were jumping us around. And finally, you go there. My son gave her the perfect bone marrow transplant, perfect match. And my daughter needed a liver transplant. And so many requests, so many requests, and they were—the doctors were denied. We were denied, until the California Nurses Association stepped in, helped us out.
We had to get out and go to their headquarters in Glendale, make a scene with our family, the Armenian Youth Federation, our church. Why do we have to do that? I’m a mother who should have been next to my daughter. Only if I knew she was going to die that same day, you think I would have that energy to go out there and do that? I could have been holding my daughter’s hand and praying with her. This is not right.
We need a better change in this country, and I’m willing to help the President to do that. And I just want to meet him. That’s all I want to do. I want to meet him. I want him to feel how it feels not to have a daughter. He has two girls; he should know.
Here's another link detailing how the health insurers place your healthcare ahead of their profits:
http://sickforprofit.com/
You seem to have scientific knowledge but an inability to interpret contract language of legislation. You literally can't show me where there's a "death panel" in the legislation because it doesn't exist any more than proof that aliens are abducting people and mating with them in the New Mexico desert.
It's also obvious you don't work with medical reimbursement or sit down with senior executives and board members of medical insurance firms. I've been a member of teams working on obtaining reimbursement codes for several new medical devices.
Just because BCBS TEC staff is "smart enough to know" does not mean those at the top won't deny coverage to get their stock price up so when management's options vest they can buy more luxury goods. BCBS (et al) management are comparing themselves to their former business school buddies at Goldman Sachs and JPM Chase who are getting fantastic bonuses. The insurance guys are playing the same greedy ego game as the bankers.
"Smart enough to know" is not part of their equation.
BCBS (et al) management knows they can tweak the premiums for employers with overweight employees likely to have diabetes, hypertension or heart disease, thereby prompting employers to RIF those employees or pay 20% higher premiums. They know the switching costs for employers are high, thus the risk of raising rates and losing customers rates is low.
The same scenario plays itself out with insurance reimbursement for mammograms. We've had several insurance firms cover our family, and I distinctly recall having to write a four figure check to cover a mammogram and radiologist services that our insurer denied because after the fact they decided it was experimental. I don't think it was an error in coding, but a conscious decision to deny coverage for an indicated procedure.
Ensuring that insurers don’t reject any American for health coverage because of a pre-existing condition is a top priority of the public. Republicans have repeatedly said that they also want to make this change, but in the alternative legislation they released, Americans with pre-existing conditions would still be left out to dry.
Today on CNN, FreedomWorks head Dick Armey defended the industry’s discriminatory practices by saying that if you have diabetes because you “eat like a pig,” you don’t deserve coverage:
ARMEY: But now, they [government officials] come along and they say, irrespective of the fact they’ve gone 20, 30, 40 years of their adult life without ever having bought insurance prior to getting a liver inflammation due to their excessive drinking habits or diabetes because they eat like a pig, you must now insure them.
But at what point do we allow the government to order people that you must sell your product to this person or that person, irrespective of any good judgment? We saw what happened in housing when they ordered banks to make loans to people who weren’t qualified. Are we now going to have the same destructive influences in health care because we’re going to order doctors to provide services and so forth?
Sounds like rationing and death panels to me!
Reason #1 cannot be brushed aside. There are MANY false positives. "By the time a woman has had 10 mammograms, she will have a 50 percent chance of being told her results are abnormal, according to the study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute." Think about what a false positive means for an individual woman: lots of worry, probably subsequent procedures including biopsy, and increased concern for all of her life after that. It also means a lot of wasted health care $$ for all of the procedures.
Also noteworthy, the National Cancer Institute says "Most breast cancers occur in women over the age of 50."
I think it's a valid debate. Do we really need to suggest that ALL women have annual or bi-annual mammograms before age 50? I don't think so. Just the ones who are identified as having risk factors.
All of this said, the wingnuts are insane. This recommendation might have been some payback of the task force members to the insurance companies. The Vice Chairman, Diana Petitti, worked or still works for Kaiser Permanente.
In 1959, I was 25 years old, didn't smoke nor drink alcohol and had just gave birth to my 3rd child, who was 4 weeks old, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
I had no family history of breast cancer, no family member had ever been diagnosed with or died of breast cancer. I had a very healthy diet with lots of vegetables, very little meat.
At 25, I had two surgeries at the same time, my breast removed and ovaries removed, to hopefully prevent the cancer from spreading. I underwent 31 days of radiation.
My 4 week old daughter is currently 50 years old and I'm a 50 year breast cancer survivor.
My baby daughter's childhood friend never had a 40th birthday after she discovered a pea sized lump.
After both breasts were removed, after countless hours of chemotherapy, she died at age 39, leaving behind 2 small children. She too, didn't have a family history of breast cancer and no one in her family had been diagnosed with or died from breast cancer.
I tell my story so that hopefully women, like you will understand that breast cancer kills women of all ages, with or without a family history of breast cancer.
False-positive results and smashed breasts are a small price to pay to live without breast cancer.
Please get tested.
I would be very interested to know if you have the BRCA gene mutation. I know you didn't know then, but it would be very cool if you could find out now. I'm all for women who are at risk getting screened earlier.
The USPSTF recommends against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years. The decision to start regular, biennial screening mammography before the age of 50 years should be an individual one and take patient context into account, including the patient's values regarding specific benefits and harms.
Notice that they do support regular mammograms for women younger than 50 if based on individual needs.
Let's also remember that the majority of women don't get breast cancer during their lifetimes, 7 out of every 8 according to the best stats I've seen. The media often reports breast cancer news as if every woman eventually gets it.
Atheist, my reason for telling you my story was had nothing to do with the task force and everything to do with your reasons for not having a mammogram.
You said that one of the reasons you haven't had a mammogram was you had no family history of breast cancer on either side of your family tree.
But you should understand that not having a history of breast cancer is only one of the risk factors for having breast cancer. In fact, The American Cancer Society says most women who do get breast cancer don't have any risk factors.
They have Mammo Pads which makes having a mammogram much more comfortable. And if your getting a lot of false positives, you should consider changing radiologists.
That was my only reason for sharing my story.
Today Jim Quinn described the goal of progressives and marxists is to re-distribute everything. We first think of wealth redistribution but he included obamacare as redistribution of life, your life. To deny you the opportunity to have a cancer screen is not only about bringing down the cost of health care, it's about redistributing your own life for the good of the system.
Speaking truth to/about progressives...
Kinda what the uninsured in this country are doing.
Since your whole existence is to irritate non-limbaugh-talking-point-believers, why don't you change your handle to proudliberal? That will irritate people on this site even more.
Job well done.
If I were a woman, I would probably opt to go for early mammograms, but as someone stated above, this is not binding, and insurance companies have already said they will continue coverage (which they obviously would right now, otherwise they would appear to be the bad guy)...
Also, breast cancer is the number two cancer killer in women. When will people bring to light the number one cancer killer, lung cancer? My mother passed away from lung cancer 4 years ago. She had regular check ups and followed through with recommendations for breast cancer detection. She did not smoke, and was only 51 when she passed away, but most people when they hear "lung cancer" quickly attribute the disease to cigarettes. When will the government issue recommendations on getting regular chest x-rays?
It is insulting that these conservative pundits love to liken things to death panels, but in reality, they don't care about the people, only their own personal political views, which are inherently selfish.
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The girl was misinformed and the reporter did her best to inform the girl. The difference between the girl and the boy interviewed was that the girl could not formulate an opinion or articulate a response, but the boy made a well said comment. Glenn Beck's response:
Well of course Palin was for it, that's how things work. Ever hear a VP go along with the president? The funny thing was, during the campaign, Palin espoused various stances that were contrary to McCain's, so what would make this time different? Palin was for it because it was popular to be for it, but now it is popular to be against it, and so she is against it.
Also, listen to how Glenn Beck jokes around, pretending to be O'Donnell calling the little girl a "wh**re sl**t"... ridiculous
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Mum Is The Word
Rush Limbaugh, another idiot, scare white people by saying "Obama's Healthcare Reform is nothing but redistribution".
Despite financial hard times and potential future health problems gullible Tea-nuts actually say no to affordable Healthcare, even though their hero have good healthcare coverage.
Racist people can not rationalize their wickedness because they speak out of ignorance, stupidity and hate.
Those who listen to Rush, Klannity and Beck are even scarier because it is one thing to hate someone, but it is another thing to join a fight against something that could be beneficial to you.
Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News' fans are down right dangerous and stupid.
What are the haves paying right now for the have-nots to get health care? What will the haves be paying when the new plan is in place?
Following these recommendation will save the health care system a lot of money. It will lower premiums (if only slightly) Same thing with end of life counseling. Same with adjusting Medicare reimbursement. Who are the ones opposed to all of these things? Right-wingers.