Mammograms indicate defects of gov’t healthcare

The recent decision of the federal government to recommend that women abstain from annual mammograms illustrates well exactly how ObamaCare would force a deterioration in the quality of medical care, particularly for the elderly.

The panel evaluating the effectiveness of mammograms did not find that they don’t work or that they do not save lives. Rather, it found that the lives they save are not “worth” the cost of annual testing. This bureaucratic balancing of human life and financial cost lies at the core of the government-managed healthcare in the Obama bill.

To maximize your chances of avoiding breast cancer, women over 50 should, of course, be tested annually. But to save the government money and to conserve scarce resources, the government would like them to increase their chances of becoming sick and get screened only every other year.

Under our current healthcare system, the government can only recommend such changes.  But under ObamaCare, it can and will require them.

This rationing of healthcare, of course, primarily affects the elderly, since it is they who need care the most. Who could ask for a better illustration of how this system would work than the government’s sudden discovery that saving lives through mammograms is not worth the cost?