Women: What about Mammograms?

If you didn't hear it, you missed a great discussion about the new guidelines regarding routine mammograms on "Up To Date" with Steve Kraske of the KC Star, on NPR. Click Here for link and podcast but you'll now need to go to the ARCHIVES to find it...

Did you know, that the overall use of mammography has only decreased deaths from breast cancer 2% ( this number had believed to be as high 30%). Even so, 2% is still many mom's and grandma's and aunt's. However, there is concern for safety of repeated mammograms -- "According to the Dept of Energy, a typical mammogram applies 25 times the radiation of a standard chest x-ray." I would wonder how long it would take a 40 year-old women w/out breast cancer getting annual mammograms to develop breast cancer as a result? 10 years, 20 years, even 30? And according to Dr. David Bouda, of Menora Medical Center (one of the guests on the show), many of the types of cancers that could be detected by mammography, are not life threatening, and by diagnosing and undergoing a biopsy, etc... can just cause more problems than needed.

New guidelines for breast cancer screening are causing quite the commotion since the announcement last week that women should hold off getting annual mammograms by a decade. The new guidelines also recommend against teaching women to do self breast exams.

Today Steve Kraske talks with Dr. David Bouda, Medical Director, Midwest Cancer Care at Menorah Medical Center and Dr. Elizabeth Campbell, an Obstetrician/Gynecologist with the Avera Women's Clinic in Mitchell, SD. We'll discuss the debate for and against the new guidelines, how the guidelines might affect insurance, and why public opinion is largely against the change.

CBS Reporter Blows the Lid Off the Swine Flu Media Hype and Hysteria

Sharyl Attkisson is a CBS News correspondent and investigative reporter. She’s covered Capitol Hill since February 2006 and has been a Washington-based correspondent there since January 1995. She was also part of the CBS news team that received the Edward Murrow Award in 2005 for overall excellence. Additionally, she received an Outstanding Investigative Journalism Emmy in 2002 for a series on the Red Cross.

In case you didn't realize it, Sharyl Attkisson is the investigative reporter behind the groundbreaking CBS News study that found H1N1 flu cases are NOT as prevalent as feared.

In fact, they’re barely on the radar screen.

How did this startling information come about, and why is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) painting a different picture entirely? I spoke directly with Sharyl Attkisson to find out.

Jim Carrey,Jenny McCarthy Larry King Live Vaccine/Autism Discussion

Good Interview w/ Banksy [graffiti artist]

Here's a good interview * out of some magazine w/ graffiti artist, Banksy, from England. I've seen some of his work on the internet, and also in a coffee-table book. He's political, satirical, and very, very creative. Check his work out - just google Banksy.

*some relatively moderate usage of 4-letter dirty words (whatever that means)

Music Commentary + Comedian = Funny

glumbert - Pachelbel's canon rant

*Just a caution for young ears --> a few minor verbal potty words

Music & Your Brain Video - w/ Bobby McFerrin

Bob McFerrin Hacks Your Brain -

See the entire video-lecture here at World Science Festival

Peace

nW

United HealthCare Fined Half a Million Dollars for Illegally Denying Chiropractic Claims

Copied from www.dailyhitblog.com

This is the reason that private health insurance companies must be regulated. Efforts to exempt them from state laws (which UHC violated in this case) without substituting federal regulations that are as strong or stronger, constitute a recipe for continued injustice.

A pair of St. Louis, Mo-based subsidiaries of UnitedHealthcare will pay $536,000 in fines and review 50,000 chiropractic claims it denied in 2004 in an agreement with Missouri regulators.

Through a settlement between the insurer and the Missouri Department of Insurance, UnitedHealthcare will reexamine the claims filed by chiropractors who treated the company’s policyholders after regulators determined the company violated state law by limiting coverage to 26 visits per year.

In other cases, the insurance department says UnitedHealthcare failed to evaluate the medical necessity of treatment before denying claims. For any chiropractic claims it finds were improperly denied, UnitedHealthcare must reimburse the specialists for those claims, plus interest and in some cases, consumers may have paid the bills, rather than their specialists.

Private sector insurers, if beholden to no one but their shareholders and bottom line, will continue to behave in this manner unless forced by law to do otherwise.

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