Reality is so fun

"So she just needs her vaccination booster today?"
"No, she needs the shot she gets every year."
"Right, her vaccination."
"NO, she needs her SHOTS."

*facepalm*

Breathe, people.

So. Since, once again, the people in the media seem to be having back-flipping shit-fits about something relatively innocuous, I thought I'd post a bit here.
Some suggestions for interpreting the news:
1: nothing is as scary as the media wants you to think.
2: source material is your friend. Look it up, ignore the screaming, read it, think about it, make up your own opinion.
3: all politicians are batshit. All of them, from every party. Only crazy people want to be politicians.

Now, that said. You can listen to the woman on whatever news channel you prefer, who is wailing "Oh my GOD, the government hates women and wants us all to die and is forbidding insurance companies from paying for mammograms, OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!!!!"

Or, you can go to the US Preventative Services Task Force website and actually read the recommendations they made and the statistics they based that recommendation on.
http://www.ahrq.gov/CLINIC/uspstf/uspsbrca.htm

The recommendations are ONLY recommendations-not policy, and certainly not anybody telling the insurance companies that they can not cover something. And really, how often has THAT happened, anyway? The government forbidding insurance to cover something, I mean. Seems to me that it's always been the other way 'round, and the if the gub'ment gets called in, it's to kick the insurance co in the butt and say "cover some of this, you bastiches."

The recommendations are made on the basis of general population statistics, evidence on the rates of cancer development, detection, and change in rate of death associated with preventative measures, as well as analysis of costs of those preventative measures (No! shut up and breathe! not just to the insurance company-costs include the stress and trauma and unnecessary testing, painful biopsies, and worry associated with false positives. The more testing you do, and especially the more testing of younger women you do, the more false positives and therefore the more cost/actual positive you accrue.)

The recommendations are specifically stated to be based on a general population model, and known high-risk individuals (family history, etc) should discuss more frequent testing with their doctor.

And really, people. Don't you want your doctors making decisions based on comprehensive analysis of the most recent data available, then applied on an individual basis to individual cases? Because that's what I want my doctor doing, and recommending every test available for every possible thing that I probably don't have is not going to make me happy.

Now. Please repeat the above, only substitute "cervical cancer" for "breast cancer" and "pap smear" for "mammogram". Thanks.