That falling sky

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Insulting hysteria

My mother died of breast cancer when I was 6. I've missed her and honored her ever since.

The cynical political fear mongering with which the political right has reacted to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's new recommendations for breast cancer screening insults my mother's memory and the health concerns of millions of American women.

That task force's study and the new ACOG guidelines for cervical cancer screening have some crying "government rationing" as they avidly oppose health care reform. But nobody I have heard of questions the science behind these recommendations - or indeed why we would base our health decisions on anything but good science.

Vaccine inefficiencies

Anyone wondering what health-care services will be like once (if?) the Obama administration "reforms" take place need look no further than the current debacle surrounding the dispensing of the H1N1 flu vaccine. My two pregnant daughters have attempted to be vaccinated, but their obstetricians and general practitioners state that they have no control over when and if they will receive the vaccine because "the government is controlling everything."

My daughters were advised to call the state health department, which they did, and after answering a series of personal questions were told to call the Durham health department, where they were informed that it did not have the vaccine and had received only 25 percent of its allocation. If the vaccine arrives, it will be dispensed on a first-come first-served basis. There was no mention of following federal guidelines that say pregnant women are among the few who should be given priority.

If we are going to debate health-care reform and the role of government,

Things to come

As a breast cancer survivor of 18 years, it is incomprehensible to me that the guidelines for having a mammogram should be changed (news story, Nov. 17) for the worse! This is a view of what is to come if the government runs health care. Already, the government is trying to ration our health care by putting out the information that mammograms before age 50 are not necessary for women who are not at high risk. Who are they trying to fool? Surely not the millions of women whose lives have been saved by early detection!

Anyone who knows a person with a history of breast cancer should besiege their senators in Washington, D.C., to vote against the government-run health care bill!

Anne Locke

Advice inflames health debate

Republicans are seizing on this week's recommendations for fewer Pap smears and mammograms to heighten concern about government-rationed medical care - and to try to chip away support by women for President Barack Obama's proposed health care overhaul.

"This is how rationing starts," Jon Kyl of Arizona, the party's second-in-command in the Senate, declared during a news conference. "This is what we're going to expect in the future."

Said Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: "Those recommendations will be used by the insurance companies as they make a determination as to what they're going to cover."

Model of intervention

In his Aug. 1 opinion piece, Max Borders urged us to look to Singapore for model health care innovation. As highlighted by George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan, Singapore has mandatory health savings accounts, the use of which is restricted to government-approved treatments; the private system competes with public health care to control costs, and the government pays 80 percent of basic public health care services. Singapore may control health care costs by getting the incentives right, but only through pervasive government intervention.

Kenneth Bowers, Raleigh