Uphill Battle

Folks wandering around the shooting blogosphere know that among the good causes that the guys work for is Kilted to Kick Cancer.  Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer deaths in America.  It is insidious, leaving the victim symptomless until it is well advanced.  Catching it early is crucial to treatment and cure, and over the last few decades one of the weapons enlisted to spot it before it is too late has been the prostate specific antigen test, or PSA.

Well, guess what guys?  ObamaCare empowers the U.S Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) to determine what preventive medical procedures are appropriate.  And they have given the PSA a "D" grade.  What does this mean?  It means that the test's neck is much more on the block when any insurance cuts, Medicare or otherwise, occur. 

Dr. Patrick Walsh of the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins states:

To understand this recommendation, you need to know that the panel had no urologists or other prostate cancer experts.   Rather it was composed of individuals with little or no knowledge of the disease who are described as “independent scientists who are better able to objectively evaluate the literature without bias”.

In other words, a panel of government bureaucrats has made a declaration concerning a test that they've only read about that helps in the fight against a disease they have never studied.  For all who mocked the idea of death panels - voila. 

Americans have for so long enjoyed better and better health care leading to longer and longer life spans.  That has now become an uphill battle, with the ever increasing government bureaucracy being the deeply entrenched enemy holding the high ground.  

Dr. Walsh's full response, including an explanation of USPSTF's use of flawed data to make their determination, is here.