4/6/10
Dear Mr. Horne: As a follow-up to our conversation last week, (see below 3/ 10) you asserted the most incredible thing. We were discussing the new USPTF (U.S. Preventive Services Task Force) guidelines re: mammogram screenings. I discussed my feelings that we were over screening so many women and under screening those most at risk. As a women's health care provider, I felt the new guidelines were sound and based upon scientific evidence. Further, they leave room for professional judgment and allow clinicians to screen earlier than age 50 for women with breast cancer risk factors. You scoffed at that idea and stated that the guidelines left no room for clinical judgment and further that the USPTF members were not health care providers and except for maybe an oncologist, there were no other medical providers, just a bunch of scientists. That didn’t sound right to me but at the time, I had no data to argue with you.
I’m sure you can Google just as easily as I can, and when I got off the bus that is exactly what I did. Mr. Horne, you are wrong. Please see: http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/uspstfab.htm Not only are there health care providers on the USPTF, the Task Force is almost exclusively consists of the same.
If you are a health policy advisor to a physician like Phil Gingrey who is so adamantly against universal access to health care, please try to get your facts straight. Google is your friend.
Yours for Women's Health,
Marilyn Ringstaff
p.s. At the Atlanta C.A.R.E. clinic we screened over fifty women and did 27 Pap smears (all the supplies we had) for women who have been uninsured for years and could not afford a Pap. We still are looking for donors to help pay our cost $24.50 per woman and would appreciate Rep. Gingrey's assistance for women. Are women W.O.R.T.H. it?
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