Yesterday's Mammogram Hearings

by: Congressman Frank Pallone

Thu Dec 03, 2009 at 12:43:34 PM EST

Cross Posted on Daily Kos

Many of you have been following the recent controversy about the US Preventive Services Task Force's new breast cancer screening recommendations - in the news, at the watercooler and around the family dinner table. The implied suggestion that screening should start at age 50 rather than the previous recommendation of 40 is a legitimate cause for concern.

I hope that the yesterday's Health Subcommittee hearing will put some of these concerns to rest. Task Force vice-chair Dr. Diana Petitti put it best, explaining that "communication was poor" on the matter, and that their original statement has "been misconstrued." Most importantly, the hearing clarified that decisions on mammograms for patients between 40 and 50 should be made by women and their doctors, and no one else. Under no circumstances should mammograms be denied to women younger than 50.

However, many opponents of health care reform have stoked the fires of controversy on this issue and are continuing to do so. The most dishonest among them are working hard to mislead the public, implying that the task force recommendations were a product of recent efforts to enact health care reform. They were not. In fact, the task force developed its suggestion while George W. Bush was still in the White House.

My colleague and friend John Dingell of Michigan pointed out these tactics for what they are - scare tactics. Even though the Obama administration was extremely proactive when the task force recommendations were released, affirming that government-backed health programs would not stop covering mammograms for women between the ages of 40 to 49, opponents of health reform have claimed otherwise. In fact, health reform will require mammograms. Now, there are no requirements for mammograms for women at any age. So health reform will make more mammograms available and covered by insurance. And even yesterday, as task force members put our fears to rest, anti-reform Republicans made outlandish statements about reform harming women's health, when clearly the opposite is true. They are trying to exploit the fears of women about breast cancer in a dishonest attempt to score political points on health reform.

As the health reform debate comes to a close, it's more important than ever for those of us who believe in real health care reform and a strong public option to be vigilant against the lies and obfuscation of those who would seek to defend the broken status quo. The only way to do that is to ask questions and uncover the truth, just as we did in yesterday's hearings. The health and safety of American women - our mothers, our sisters, our wives and our daughters - is too important an issue to be turned into political fodder by the opponents of reform.

To learn more about what I'm doing to further the health care reform debate in Congress, visit my website at PalloneForAHealthyNJ.com.