Or is it just about saving money?

When you have a health care "reform" bill in the Senate that not only may effectively make abortion a non-reimbursable procedure, but also does not explicitly cover procedures that are unique to women, you have to wonder if women's health care is going to be sacrificed on the altar of cost containment. That's why I'm skeptical about the mammography guidelines put forth yesterday by the United States Preventive Services Task Force:

The new recommendations, which do not apply to a small group of women with unusual risk factors for breast cancer, reverse longstanding guidelines and are aimed at reducing harm from overtreatment, the group says. It also says women age 50 to 74 should have mammograms less frequently — every two years, rather than every year. And it said doctors should stop teaching women to examine their breasts on a regular basis.

Just seven years ago, the same group, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, with different members, recommended that women have mammograms every one to two years starting at age 40. It found too little evidence to take a stand on breast self-examinations.

The task force is an independent panel of experts in prevention and primary care appointed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Its new guidelines, which are different from those of some professional and advocacy organizations, are published online in The Annals of Internal Medicine They are likely to touch off yet another round of controversy over the benefits of screening for breast cancer.

Dr. Diana Petitti, vice chairwoman of the task force and a professor of biomedical informatics at Arizona State University, said the guidelines were based on new data and analyses and were aimed at reducing the potential harm from overscreening.

While many women do not think a screening test can be harmful, medical experts say the risks are real. A test can trigger unnecessary further tests, like biopsies, that can create extreme anxiety. And mammograms can find cancers that grow so slowly that they never would be noticed in a woman’s lifetime, resulting in unnecessary treatment.

Now that said, I have a certain amount of skepticism about mammograms, for all that I have one every year. I'm not sure I believe that they CAUSE breast cancer, as some believe (though I wouldn't rule it out, this IS women's health care that is aimed at women who are no longer "fuckable" and are therefore expendable in our society), but whether they prevent deaths remains to be seen. And then when I start thinking that way I think of the family friend who never had a mammogram and by the time her cancer was discovered, she had significant lymph node spread.

The timing of this report has my spidey-sense a-tingle, coming as it does from a group that advises doctors and insurance companies. If you think this report isn't going to affect coverage for mammograms, you're deluding yourself. And it just seems peculiar that it's WOMEN'S health care that is getting this kind of scrutiny.