And Cindy, if you are so willing to accept the limitations of the gov’t, which you seem to agree are going to be just as bad as the insurance companies, why are you so for then giving all that responsibility over to the gov’t? Doesn’t sound like we are going to get any better care. And we all know the gov’t can’t do anything without making it cost 10 times more than it should. (Please don’t be fooled that this is going to in any way be cheaper than what we have now.) Why then are we forcing through this bill? All I’ve heard from supporters is the gov’t will allow more care for less, no limitations. They won’t have restrictions on pre-existing conditions or the treatment that we need. Now you are defending the restrictions the gov’t is finally telling us they are mandating with this bill so where is the benefit in this bill? It is finally coming out (now that they are letting us see the bill) that what we have been told about this bill is B.S. You were adamant before that there would be no limitations with this bill. Now when you are shown this bill is not what you thought it was going to be and will not give you the coverage you thought it would, you are still saying we should have it. Why? Is it possible there are more things you thought to be the “saving grace” with this bill that are going to turn out to be complete lies?

You were so mad because you were not diagnosed properly and lost 2 years of treatment and when I pointed out that the gov’t would make you wait to even get the tests done, you dismissed it by saying the tests that are run aren’t even that accurate and you probably would not have been diagnosed any earlier. So why do we need this bill????? You said MRIs are better to catch the cancer. Do you still believe the gov’t will give you one? I cannot believe you are so committed to this piece of crap legislation that you completely abandoned your beliefs and arguments to support it. Everything you have been arguing on this blog to support this bill you just completely threw by the wayside. You have been so completely adamant that you are against the restrictions set in place by the insurance companies and this bill was going to remove those. Now that it is being shown that this bill will not only have its own restrictions they will be even more strict than what we have already, why would you still want it? It is not giving you the coverage you have been demanding you wanted and believed it would.

Sounds like we are going to just get more of the same according to you. Seems like at this point people just want to pass a bill “to make history”. I can’t tell you how many politicians I have heard say “We need to pass something” or “This bill is history and I can’t image anyone wanting to vote against history.” You know what, Hitler is history. Mae Tse-Tung is history. Slavery is history but that doesn’t mean any of it was good!!!!!

I’ve had 2 MRI’s, several x-rays, 2 EMG’s and 2 surgeries. Other than my deductible everything was covered with my insurance. If I ever have an issue and I need a test done, I’ve never had any problems with my insurance. If you aren’t getting anything paid for then maybe your company needs to find a better insurance provider. They’re out there. I’ve got a very good plan. Maybe that might be a better solution than overhauling the entire health care system in this country. Do you total a whole car just because one wheel is busted?

I have included below the interview with my House Rep Marsha Blackburn on ABC Sunday:

Please read this as it contains the sections that will give panels like the one that came out with the breast cancer screening recommendation authority to dictate what shall/ shall not be covered in government and approved plans.

**** FACT CHECK ****
H.R. 3962 and Preventive Services: Read Blackburns detailed analisys of the text of H.R. 3962 to see how recommendations by the USPSTF would achieve binding force and impact American women.

U.S. Preventive Services Task Force: Many have asserted that the USPSTF is an independent panel not connected to the Federal Government. This is untrue. According to their own webpage, the Task Force was first convened by the U.S. Public Health Service and now works under the Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Health Care Research And Quality. Public Law requires that AHRQ convene the USPSTF. Read more at their website: http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/uspstfab.htm (note the .gov address!)

**** TRANSCRIPT****
STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me for a second. I want to bring this back to another controversy we had this week over the cancer deadlines, because it connects to this point in the patient-doctor relationship. You and several others were critical…

BLACKBURN: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: … of the — of the guidelines saying that this is — that under the president’s plan, under the Democrat’s plan, it’s going to lead to more rationing. Yet the American Cancer Society says that the Republican alternative is worse, would do more harm than good, wouldn’t give preventive services to anyone, and that under these bills, preventive care is encouraged and actually required by insurance companies. So isn’t that an improvement?

BLACKBURN: Well, actually, it is not. And the guidelines that came out this week by the Preventive Services Task Force have a direct link to what would be offered if the House and the Senate bills were to go into law, if they were to be put into law.

And, George, this is exactly how it happens. If you go to page 1,296 of the House bill, the engrossed copy, and you began to read in title three of that bill, on preventive and wellness services, and you get down to section 2301, this is what happens. In section 3131 of that bill, it changes the Preventive Services Task Force to the Clinical Preventive Services Task Force.

[FACT CHECK: Authority for the Task Force on Clinical Preventitive Services in H.R. 3962 is here]

Then, you go back and you see that that task force on preventive clinical services is tasked with rating A, B, C, D, or I all preventive services. Then you go back into section 222 of the bill…

[FACTCHECK: Grading preventive services language is here on page 1302]

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKBURN: Yes, I have read this bill. And that indicates what would be paid or covered. And this is where the actual link comes, and I’ll read it for you. In section 2301, it says, “All recommendations of the Preventive Services Task Force” — that’s the group that did the mammograms — “and the Task Force on Community Preventive Services, as in existence on the day before the date of the enactment of this act, shall be considered to be recommendations of the Task Force on Clinical Preventive Services.”

[FACT CHECK: Current USPSTF recommendations having the force of law is here on pages 1329-1330 lines 21-25 and 1-5 respectively ]

STEPHANOPOULOS: So the guidelines — the point is that the guidelines then…

BLACKBURN: They becomes the law.

STEPHANOPOULOS: … would — would become…

BLACKBURN: They become the law, the mandate.

STEPHANOPOULOS: … would become controlling.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: No, they would not be.

BLACKBURN: Yes, they do.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: And what’s unfortunate is that the Republicans, and Ms. Blackburn, have for the first time politicized breast cancer.

BLACKBURN: That is incorrect.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: That is — no, it is not. And I’m a breast cancer…

BLACKBURN: No, it is incorrect.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: As you know, as a breast cancer survivor, Marsha…

BLACKBURN: That is incorrect. It’s in the bill, Debbie.

[FACT CHECK: Read exactly where it is in the bill here]

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Excuse me.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let her finish her point.

BLACKBURN: I have a great respect — yes.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: As a breast cancer survivor, I came out against these — these recommendations. Every major cancer organization has come out against these recommendations. The task force language in that bill actually makes sure that prevention — preventive services like mammograms and colonoscopies and other cancer screenings would be free. The task force recommendations — the language in the bill…

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, Debbie, let me — let me clarify this…

(CROSSTALK)

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: … that even more women would get access to…

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me for a second. That — that is true. But let me clarify a little bit, because under the — the bill — and we have — we have the language, as well. It says that a group health plan and health insurance issuer offering the group (ph) shall provide coverage, but only under — if the Preventive Services Task Force rates it as an A or B.

[FACT CHECK: H.R. 3962 page 1302 lines 14-16]

BLACKBURN: That’s right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, actually, under the — under the task force, they said that these mammograms for women 40 to 50 is rated C. So they actually wouldn’t be covered. So you have a great expansion for a broad part of the population, but actually, these guidelines would be controlling for ages 40 or 50.

[FACT CHECK: USPSTS mammogram recommendation for women under 50 is "C"]

(CROSSTALK)

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: … task force’s recommendations are simply recommendations. They…

[FACT CHECK: H.R. 3962 "all recommendations of the Preventive Services Task Force...as in existance on the day before the date of the enactment of this Act shall be to be considered recommendations foy the Task Force on Clinical Preventive Services." (page 1329-1330)]

[FACT CHECK: H.R. 3962 page 1317-1318 "If on the basis of findings of research and demonstration projects...the Task Force on Clinical Preventive Services Determines that a subsidy or reward meets the Task Force' standards for a grade A or B the Secretary shall ensure that the subsidy or reward is included in the essential benefits package..."]

BLACKBURN: No.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: They aren’t controlling.

COBURN: As a physician who’s been…

(CROSSTALK)

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: They aren’t going to be — they aren’t going to be binding. They’re recommendations.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, but the language here says they would be binding on that issue.

(CROSSTALK)

COBURN: Here’s the question. Here’s the question we ought to be asking. Do these recommendations make sense from a cost standpoint? Absolutely, from a cost standpoint, they’re right. You look at the statistical analysis, they make sense.

From a patient standpoint, they’re atrocious. And that’s the problem with a bureaucracy stepping between a physician and their patient.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Can you weigh in on this?

NELSON: Well, absolutely. I — I worry about a government-run plan that would be subject to recommendations that might be applied universally without respect to patients. I am concerned about that, not that you can’t fix some of those concerns, but you can’t fix every one of them, and I am concerned that if it’s — if it’s turned over — look, the insurance industry has its own challenges. And — and many of those can be handled with transparency and by eliminating pre-existing conditions and rescissions and rating based on health and some of the other ratings — gender ratings.

But — but we’re not going to — if we can keep as much of it at the state level is as possible, you’ve got — you’ve got patient’s bill of rights, you’ve got all kinds of mandated coverages, and — and this can be handled on a state-by-state basis. It gets lost in Washington in a big government-run plan, and I don’t know what happens.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But if you don’t have these kind of guidelines, how are you going to get the cost control you were talking about 10 minutes ago?

NELSON: Well, I don’t mind guidelines and recommendations, but I don’t want them to become the equivalent of rules and law.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: And we can’t…

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKBURN: And it says “shall.”

[FACT CHECK: H.R. 3962 page 1317-1318 "If on the basis of findings of research and demonstration projects...the Task Force on Clinical Preventive Services Determines that a subsidy or reward meets the Task Force' standards for a grade A or B the Secretary shall ensure that the subsidy or reward is included in the essential benefits package..." emphasis added.]

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: We have to make sure that we’re not forgetting about the people. And that’s what the task force forgot about this week, is that we’re not thinking about big, amorphous blobs of — of people. Making — these recommendations say that we can trade one life to save the angst and anxiety in a — a larger group of women, and that’s totally inappropriate, but that’s also why major experts, medical experts, the cancer society, the colon foundation all came out against this, and that won’t be…

BLACKBURN: Well, but still it’s a mandate.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: … controlling in the final legislation.

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: … going to be changed?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Actually, you know, I would invite you — I would invite you…

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKBURN: Well, you know what? I think you and I need to work as — together on a motion to instruct and get this language out of here, because on page 1,318, it does mandate it. It…

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha, first, I would suggest…

BLACKBURN: … says that the HHS secretary has to do this. So, you know…

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: No, we have different interpretations, but…

BLACKBURN: … Debbie is right when she says they forgot about people. Indeed, they did. But we have to realize, this group that made this recommendation, this isn’t some outside group. This is a part of HHS. And when you look at the…

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It’s an independent group. That is not accurate.

BLACKBURN: … 118 — when you look at the…

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It is not a part of HHS.

BLACKBURN: No, it is a part of HHS.

[FACT CHECK: USPSTF is part of the Department of Health and Human Services ]

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: No, it is not.

BLACKBURN: And when you look at what is going to happen with these 118 new bureaucracies with 62 directives that are given by the health choices commissioner on what insurance can be offered in this country after 2013 and what is going to be paid, you know that this is the bureaucrat in the exam room. This is how it’s going to happen.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha…

BLACKBURN: And this is the first step.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Marsha, there’s an insurance company bureaucrat in the — in between the patient and her doctor right now.

BLACKBURN: This is breast cancer. Well, and people don’t like that, and we need to get rid of…

(CROSSTALK)

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: And your bill — your — your alternative…

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKBURN: We need to get rid of all of those insurance bureaucrats.

It was a task force recommendation…not a government mandate in regards to the screenings. The mammograms that I had in my early 40s did not really help me find my cancer. It only catches 17% even if the doctor DOES read the report. I found my own cancer. The better option is MRI–it catches 77% but we can’t get those because our current health care system won’t pay for them. I can’t even get it on my remaining breast. So believe me there are already plenty of restrictions WITHOUT the President’s plan.