Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) told Fox News today that a government task force that controversially recommended new guidelines for mammograms last week could kill women like his wife, a breast cancer survivor, if the health care reform bill passes.
The new guidelines are the “first step of rationing of health care in the country,” he said. His wife was diagnosed with a mammogram, he said, and the cancer had already spread.
“The mammogram has saved her life. But yet this preventive panel, which the health care bill says, ‘Oh no, they’re the ones who get to decide what the prevention measures are paid for or not.’ That panel would have not allowed her to have this care,” Barrasso said.
Barrasso made the same claim Saturday night before the Senate voted to begin debate on the health care reform bill, according to The Hill.
“This type of legislation would have cost my wife her life,” Barrasso said on Saturday.
As part of a scripted exchange, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) responded: “You would not describe that as a death panel?”
“Some people might,” Barrasso said.
So does Barrasso’s claim — that, under health care reform, the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force would decide which procedures patients could receive — hold water?
The Senate health care bill does say insurers would have to cover services the task force gives an “A” or “B” recommendation.
And the task force now gives a “C” recommendation to mammograms for women under 50. That “C” means doctors should only offer a procedure if it makes sense for the individual patient — in this case, a woman with family history of breast cancer or other risk factors.
But the bill doesn’t allow the task force’s recommendations to bar patients from receiving treatment, as Barrasso is suggesting when he says, “That panel would have not allowed her to have this care.”
