Just last week, DrRich wrote a post explaining why medical screening tests, under our new paradigm of centralized healthcare, will always be found to be ineffective and harmful. Therefore, it will be the job of the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)*, after making a great show of examining randomized clinical trials as if the result is not a foregone conclusion, to declare such tests useless.

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*Regular readers will recall that the Obamacare legislation has transformed the USPSTF from its former status as a mere (one might say milquetoasty) advisory board, which made recommendations on preventive health that doctors and patients could take or leave alone, into an extraordinarily powerful GOD panel (Government Operatives Deliberating) that determines, definitively, which preventive services are to be covered and not covered by private insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid.
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DrRich thought his observation would be viewed by many as a bit “out there,” and that proponents of Obamacare would accuse him (as they so often do) of being paranoid and reactionary. So imagine his surprise when, just yesterday, the New York Times published a “news analysis” which aggressively begins selling the public on that very notion – that medical screening tests are, by and large, a bad thing to do.

Even DrRich thought the Progressives would be somewhat circumspect about breaking such remarkable and counter-intuitive news to us in the great unwashed – especially considering that they have just spent the last three decades teaching us just the opposite.  But then he recalled their smooth, unapologetic and entirely unremarked transition, around twenty years ago, from sounding the alarm about global cooling to catarwauling about global warming.

And he reminded himself that when you are a Progressive, history always began 10 minutes ago.  And this turns out to be a great convenience.

In this case it is particularly convenient, when you consider the passionate declarations by Ms. Pelosi and others in 2009 that the watchword of Obamacare – indeed, the very key to the dramatically lower costs we would realize with this new legislation – would be “prevention, prevention, prevention.”

It is always risky to speculate on what is actually going on in Ms. Pelosi’s head, but certainly the public health experts who helped devise Obamacare understood the truth all along.  Namely, it is axiomatic that medical screening tests will always, without exception, cost the healthcare system far more money than they can ever save the healthcare system. And therefore, medical screening tests will have to be suppressed – which is precisely why our new healthcare law provides the mechanism for doing so.

While readers should never doubt DrRich, he is aware that, sadly, many do.  And so it may be necessary to review why screening tests are invariably a money-losing proposition:

• The screening tests themselves are often expensive.
• Screening tests often produce false positive results, so additional (often invasive and always costly) testing will need to be done to confirm or deny the diagnosis.
• If the diagnosis is made, treatment will be applied which is often dreadfully expensive.
• The diagnostic testing is often “too sensitive,” such that it may make a positive diagnosis for a very early condition that, if it had been left alone, may not have done serious harm. The cost of treatment will therefore be wasted.
• The screening test, the confirmatory tests, and the treatments that will be applied as a result of screening all carry the risk of complications, and the treatment of these complications can be extraordinarily costly.
• If the patient’s life is saved by the screening test and subsequent therapy, that patient (who is often an Old Fart like DrRich) will persist, for several more years, to soak younger, worthier Americans for Social Security and Medicare payments; and worse, will ultimately develop some other expensive medical problem everyone else will have to pay for.

Q.E.D.

The fact is, the best we can hope for from medical screening tests is that they might save a life here and there, which is hardly a public health victory. But whether they save a few lives or not, they’re inevitably going to cost us a lot of money.

And clearly, from the public health standpoint, a standpoint from which we’re paying for all healthcare collectively from pooled resources (and working hard to deny people the legal right to spend their own money on their own healthcare), it makes no sense to do screening tests.

Screening tests only make sense to the individuals who are at risk for the medical condition being screened, not to the collective.

The New York Times goes on at length to explain how screening for early cancers causes harm and inconvenience for many people in order to help a few. It mentions several of the points in DrRich’s bullet list above. It quotes several public health experts who, shaking their heads sadly, allow as how perhaps the medical profession has “oversold” screening tests in the past decades. These experts lament the fact that the public will need to be re-educated about the limitations and the harm being done by these tests. The Times worries that, perhaps, people will think the new de-emphasis on screening tests is related to healthcare costs, when nothing could be further from the truth.  The worthlessness of screening tests is a new revelation, made clear by recent clinical trials. What can we do but follow the science?

DrRich is not arguing that medical screening tests are invariably a good idea. In fact, he has just given his readers an entire list of reasons they are often not a good idea.

What he is arguing is that the whole framework for our current debate over screening tests is wrong.

The proper way to deal with the imperfections of screening tests is as follows. We should carefully explain to each individual who is a candidate for screening (because they are at risk for the medical condition being screened), all of the risks of embarking on a screening pathway – the potential discomfort, inconvenience, medical risks, and costs of the screening test, of the possible follow-up tests that may be required, and of the treatments that may become necessary if the testing is positive.  The individual can then weigh these negatives against the possibility of failing to discover a treatable disease while it is still treatable. And, taking into account everything that people take into account when making such momentous personal decisions, the individual can do what they believe is right for them. And either decision – to have or not have the test – would be reasonable, rational, and evidence-based – for that individual.

But we are arguing this question as if taking individual preferences into account is not even on the table. We are arguing as if we must make a sweeping decision regarding screening – yes or no – that will apply across the board, to all Americans, regardless of how they would personally weigh the relative risks and benefits.

We are arguing in this way because that’s precisely the approach that Obamacare has codified into law.  Medical decisions from now on will be centralized, and not individualized.  The GOD panelists will determine which decision is best for the collective. And what’s best for the collective is best for us individuals.

But the “screening test debate” graphically illustrates a truth that modern medical ethicists at least implicitly (and often explicitly) deny: What’s best for the collective is NOT always what’s best for the individual. And when we must only make medical decisions collectively, individual Americans will be systematically harmed. And that includes, according to the USPSTF’s own documentation, several thousand women and men each year whose early, currently treatable, but ultimately lethal breast and prostate cancers will no longer be detected early enough to do any good.

DrRich thinks these individuals should be given the opportunity to consider their options regarding medical screening, and make the choice that’s right for them. Progressives – especially the GOD panelists, the public health experts, and most of the American media  – do not.

That’s the debate we should be having.

While Grand Rounds is normally the highlight of everybody’s week here in the medical blogosphere, this time it’s different. This week, we are all – each and every one of us  – completely distracted by the most wonderful sense of expectation and joy, to the exclusion of virtually every other human emotion. For DrRich, at least, the feeling puts him in mind of the giddy anticipation he experienced on, say, his 5th Christmas eve, when he was still young enough to consider Santa Claus a magical-but-real agent of earthly delights. (This was before DrRich realized that Santa, being obese, is actually a great menace to society.)

For this, dear reader, is the week when President Obama will turn his considerable powers of intellect, at long last, to the issue of jobs. The President indicated to us more than a month ago that he would, in his own good time, present to us his program for fixing the horrific and prolonged unemployment problem which now affects most American families in some way. And thus realizing that a solution is finally at hand, we in the great unwashed masses have waited, as patiently as we could, through earthquakes, hurricanes, Martha’s Vinyard vacations, and numerous pre-season football games, for the President to tell us the Answer. And, summoning together a Joint Session of Congress – a venue most often reserved for declarations of war and similar life-altering policy initiatives, thus confirming the momentous nature of his coming words – he will finally proclaim to us the Good News, a mere two days from now. One can cut the anticipation with a knife.

So, while it is indeed an honor to be hosting Grand Rounds during this historic week. DrRich must admit to finding it a little difficult to concentrate his efforts. No doubt readers will likewise find it a challenge to turn their attention away from the Big Event long enough to peruse the following posts – the best of the medical blogosphere this week.

But be assured that there is good stuff to follow. So, if you find yourself incapable of focusing your attention on Grand Rounds at the moment, simply bookmark this page, and return to it once your sense of soaring happiness returns (as it inevitably must) to a more normal state. Be assured that this week’s entries are timeless enough to outlive your ecstasy (an emotion which – alas! – to be effective, must always be transient).

So let us begin.

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DrRich – having been informed not long ago, by an actual U.S. Attorney who at that moment had him under a form of official duress, that the DOJ is well aware of this blog and the general tenor of its content – always likes to mention early in any long post (so that his minders do not have to read the whole thing) any items that might be helpful to the Administration. Accordingly, we open Grand Rounds this week with the announcement, posted in The Examining Room of Dr. Charles, of the 2011 Charles Prize for Poetry. Dr. Charles has been hosting this prestigious contest – which seeks and awards excellence in poetry touching on health, science or medicine – for some time now, and it has proven to be an exceedingly popular annual event.

In addition to the significant intrinsic merits that accompany the Charles Prize for Poetry, DrRich must note that Dr. Charles is also awarding a not-inconsiderable cash prize to the winners. That is, he is creating what, in our present economic environment, must be considered damned-near jobs. Encouraging employment in the career of poetry is something, DrRich thinks, the President should seriously consider before Thursday night, lest he be tempted to make the huge mistake of attempting to whip up enthusiasm yet again for Green Jobs. (In the wake of the collapse just last week of the heavily-government-subsidized and heavily-Obama-promoted Solyndra Company, and of at least two other companies that received large federal funds for Green Jobs, treading that dead ground again would merely reveal that he is entirely bereft of ideas.) The Administration ought to thank DrRich, and especially Dr. Charles, for this critically important advice. Encouraging poesy, instead of Green Jobs, would demonstrate the kind of new thinking we are all looking for from our President at this critical juncture.

At Dr. Malpani’s Blog, Dr. M. outlines his 3-step approach for helping his patients understand the intricate concepts of in-vitro fertilization. First, you describe how the thing is supposed to work when everything is functioning normally (the “thing” in this case being the human reproductive system). Then, you describe to the patient where the system is breaking down in his/her case. And finally, you describe the options available for mitigating the breakdown. Dr. Malpani’s system, which he points out is generalizable, is aimed at creating a consensus for action when faced with a complex problem.

DrRich will only remark that Dr. M’s system, which works well enough for problems based in human physiology, is proving pretty worthless for problems based in the more social sciences, such as economics. This is because of a fundamental disagreement, among the debaters, on how the economy is “supposed to work when everything is functioning normally.” Progressives and conservatives have very different ideas about this. So Dr. M’s approach, which requires both logic and a fundamental consensus on what constitutes “normal” behavior, is unsuitable to non-physiologic systems.

Dr. Val at Better Health posts a recent interview with Dr. Dori Carlson, president of the American Optometric Association, regarding the importance of screening children for subtle but significant vision problems. (Dr. Val and Dr. Dori are referring here to the kinds of vision problems that involve optics, and not the kind suffered by our political leaders.) The type of gross vision screening which is conducted by most schools misses the majority of these vision problems in children, and those undetected vision problems not infrequently lead to impaired learning. Also, they often lead to misdiagnoses and inappropriate treatment, likely including the misdiagnosis of ADHD. (Missed vision problems constitute only one of the causes for the explosion in ADHD diagnoses in recent years. A more common cause, in our overly-feminized schools, is being a boy. Indeed, as nearly as DrRich can tell, being a boy today is a disease; they have drugs for it and everything.) In any case, if you are a parent of a school-aged child, you should strongly consider having your child’s vision checked by an ophthalmologist or optometrist – especially if somebody wants to put him on Ritalin.

Henry Stern at InsureBlog tells us the good news and bad news about a new study related to heart attacks. He notes that heart attack victims are receiving definitive therapy in American hospitals much more quickly than they were just a few years ago. And when you are having a heart attack, minutes count – the longer that coronary artery is occluded, the more permanent damage is done to your heart, and the higher your odds of death or disability. So the diminished delay to treatment is good news. As usual, though, there is bad news attached. DrRich, always the sunny optimist, does not wish to repeat the bad news. You can go to the InsureBlog to read it for yourself.

The ACP Internist reports a study showing that 80% of today’s doctors look up on-line information in front of their patients. DrRich, who admits to being an Old Fart, does not find this surprising, since young physicians these days are, well, young. And young people are on-line all of the time, reporting their every trivial thought and mundane action instantaneously to the Cloud. (If Andy Warhol were alive today he’d be talking about our 15 minutes of anonymity.) But you don’t have to be a young doctor to take up these new habits. It appears from this new survey that doctors of all age groups have ritualistically placed an LCD screen between themselves and their patients. In so doing, they have awarded to those distant, expert panels – the ones spinning out all those guidelines, pay-for-performance checklists, marching orders, &c – their appropriate and rightful physical position, that is, directly interposed between doctor and patient. This is more than mere symbolism, but the symbolism is delicious.

But, dear reader, please do not be too critical of today’s doctors. If you yourself were a savvy modern physician, realizing that you could go to jail if you do what you think is medically appropriate before checking with the Authorities to find out if it is also allowable, you’d have a computer screen in front of your face too, and you’d be looking stuff up in front of your patients the entire time they were blathering on about their symptoms or whatever. DrRich worries for the 20% of doctors (likely, his fellow Old Farts) who haven’t “gotten it” yet.

Beth Gainer at Calling the Shots makes an important observation about the two classic narratives to which all victims of breast cancer are assigned – the narrative of the triumphant hero, and the narrative of the courageous and noble victim. Ms. Gainer’s observation is that most women with breast cancer do not fit either of these prescribed narratives. Many women are thus left feeling guilty or diminished when they find that their experience is not meeting with society’s expectations. Ms. Gainer is absolutely correct, and indeed, her observation is generalizable. The same thing occurs whenever society’s designated narrative-makers assign a range of permissible attitudes, thoughts and behaviors to any defined group. Mercy on any member of the group who falls outside those designated norms.

David E. Williams at the venerable Health Business Blog addresses the question of how we – society – will cope with the next big trend in the drug industry – the development of “niche” drugs, drugs that are suitable for only a relatively small number of patients and which, therefore, are exceedingly expensive to develop and market. David goes directly to the real question – the problem of niche drugs makes the issue of healthcare rationing unavoidable.

So far, of course, we are doing our healthcare rationing covertly, and in the case of niche drugs that usually means interpreting clinical results in such a way as to minimize their potential benefits. We do this by saying that Drug X “only increases survival by 4 months,” and ignoring the fact that “4 months” is an average value, and that while many patients have no benefit at all, a non-negligible minority may live a lot longer. The question, “Is it worth $50,000 for only four more months of life?” is different from the question, “Is it worth $50,000 to have a realistic shot at living several extra years?” Covert rationing causes us to frame the question in such a way that the answer to any question beginning with “Is it worth. . .” is always, “no.”

At the Road to Hellth, Douglas Perednia, one of the best analysts of health policy writing today, looks at the rationale for the onerous penalties which are required under Obamacare for hospitals whose patients are readmitted at higher than the average readmission rates. Perednia describes the bogus math which the Feds are apparently using to determine what appropriate readmission rates ought to be – and points out the irony of requiring doctors to behave in an “evidence-based” fashion, while the Feds themselves are using frivolous statistics to dole out the equivalent of the NCAA Death Penalty to our hospitals.

Steven Seay, PhD discusses what ought to be second nature to any clinician – applying the principles of the scientific method to clinical practice. That is: gather the necessary data to formulate an hypothesis; institute therapy based on that hypothesis; measure the results of that therapy; revise the hypothesis to reflect this new data; repeat as necessary. This is the way clinical practice should be done. DrRich is happy to learn that it is still apparently OK for clinical psychologists to function in this manner. For physicians, especially PCPs, the scientific method has become forcibly compressed to: make a diagnosis; treat according to the guidelines. While the patient might not do so well with this new method, the physician will be OK, since “quality” will be measured according to one’s compliance with the guidelines. Measuring the actual results of the treatment, of course, would only lead to trouble, and in most cases will be avoided.

James Gault, MD, of the blog Retired Doc’s Thoughts, is a long-time champion of classical medical ethics (as opposed to the New Age medical ethics now formally espoused by all the major professional organizations).  As such, Dr. Gault often deconstructs arguments being published by modern medical ethicists supporting these New Age ethics, which require doctors to act for the benefit of the collective rather than for the benefit of their individual patients. In this post, Dr. Gault gives a very effective what-for to Professor Fuchs of Stanford, who, once again, has published a paper advancing the bankrupt argument that what’s good for the collective is necessarily good for the individual. These kinds of vapid arguments may fool the Whippersnappers, but they’re not fooling us Old Farts.

The ACP Hospitalist notes that, according to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a “grey market” is developing for life-saving medications that have been in severe short supply for the past few years. A grey market, DrRich thinks, is like a black market, but less illegal – though it is possible they are referring to Old Farts who are merchants. In any case, the ISMP says the grey market is price-gouging hospitals that need those important drugs, and have nowhere else to buy them. The solution, according to the ISMP, is (among other things) to empower the FDA to manage drug shortages and tighten regulations for drug distribution.

The growing, widespread shortage of important medications is indeed a bad problem. We should look for a solution to this problem. Shortages of any product occur when it costs companies more to make the product than they can get for it in the marketplace. Onerous regulatory policies by the FDA which, in the name of product safety, have greatly increased the cost of doing business for pharmaceutical companies, along with recent de facto price controls on generic drugs, have combined to make it economically unfeasible for drug companies to expend large resources to manufacture these drugs. It seems doubtful that piling on even more regulations will improve the situation. And attacking the grey markets will simply drive them further into the dark (since black markets are nature’s way of providing a product when governments act to limit it). Given the expected 500,000 pages of new regulations being conjured up out of the Obamacare legislation, drug shortages are merely the first of many critical medical shortages we will be seeing in the coming years. So it will be instructive to watch how our leaders handle this problem.

In any case, from the job-creation standpoint, DrRich believes there will be many employment opportunities in coming years in sundry black markets related to healthcare. Many skills will be needed, some of which should be quite exciting!

At the Prepared Patient Forum, Trudy Lieberman writes a post entitled “Health Insurance, Meet the Jolly Green Giant,” in which she discusses the new, patient-friendly labels that are supposed to accompany health insurance policies under Obamacare beginning no later than 2014. The labels sound like a good idea, but as Ms. Lieberman points out, there will be problems. For instance, for the Feds to mandate transparency in labeling is unlikely to be all that helpful when, at the same time, they often mandate utter secrecy on the part of providers (for instance, in creating severe anti-trust penalties for doctors who reveal the fees they have negotiated with insurance carriers). But as always, results are far less important than simply meaning well.

Sharp Incisions, a blog written by a self-described “fledgling” medical student, has sent in an affecting post about scrubbing in on a unique surgical case – the harvesting of six vital organs for transplantation from a patient who has been declared brain dead. DrRich prays that Dr. Incisions will maintain for a long time the same sense of wonder and gratitude, expressed in this post, for the gift of life.

A medical student who blogs anonymously at the D.O.ctor Blog, describes her first experience participating in cardiopulmonary resuscitation when it actually counted. DrRich, who in his days as a cardiac electrophysiologist ran hundreds of these things, and who became convinced over the years that three people was the optimal number to run a “code,” admits to being a little taken aback by this student’s description of the event, which sounds like it must have been as complex to coordinate as a Busby Berkeley production number. No wonder she was a little astonished by her experience. DrRich supposes that this must be the new-style CPR mandated by some new guideline or other, and would not be surprised to learn later this week that CPR procedures requiring 15 participants is part of the President’s new Jobs Plan.

Speaking of sudden death, one of DrRich’s recurrent themes here on the CRB is that sudden death is a great boon to our healthcare system (since not only is sudden death itself very cheap, but also it tends to remove individuals who would otherwise continue collecting Social Security, and who tend to have expensive chronic heart disease), and that therefore the government will tend to stifle the prevention of sudden death any time it can. Accordingly, Dr. Wes tells us that the Feds are about to further limit the use of the Zoll wearable defibrillator. Doctors have taken to using this device in high-risk patients during the first month or so after a heart attack, since guidelines specify that ICDs (implantable defibrillators) must not be implanted during this interval. Since sudden death is particularly likely during that first month, the Zoll device is being used as a “bridge to ICD.” Obviously, sudden death being the healthcare system’s friend, this must not be permitted. And so, Dr. Wes points out, soon it will not be.

At the HealthAGEnda Blog of the John A. Hartford Foundation, Marcus Escobedo describes how his father is coping with the decisions that need to be made as he deals with recurrent prostate cancer. Helping elderly patients deal with health issues is the thrust of Mr. Escobedo’s work at Hartford, and his new personal experience, he tells us, drives home the point. Specifically, Escobedo works to assure that elderly patients are considered to be more than just the sum of their disease and their age. DrRich is sorry to have to point out that no less an expert on American healthcare than President Obama has explicitly disagreed with this approach, and on national television to boot. Perhaps when he said this the President was suffering under the influence of teleprompterpenia, and perhaps if he had an opportunity to meet with Mr. Escobedo over a beer in the Rose Garden, he would possibly begin to revise his position to one that is more compatible with the mission of the Harford Foundation. On behalf of America’s Old Farts, DrRich would certainly hope so.

Dr. Thomas Pane writes in the Business, Surgery & Medicine Blog about tantrums, specifically, the kind occasionally thrown by surgeons in the operating suite. His post carries an important Labor Day lesson for anyone who hopes to make a career in the medical field in the coming years, so pay attention:

Everyone can agree that throwing tantrums in the operating room is never a good thing, and that quite often, it is a very bad thing. But Dr. Pane points out that, counterproductive as tantrums often are, they are nonetheless not the worst possible way in which a surgeon can express his/her utter frustration at a bureaucracy that blithely conspires to disrupt surgical procedures at critical moments. He reminds us, once again, that the biggest handicap one can ever have when working in an environment in which bureaucratic mud has fouled every gear is: giving a sh*t. So, while Dr. Pane may or may not agree, here’s the lesson: If surgeons would simply adopt the apathetic, indifferent attitude that classically characterizes long-term survivors in work environments mired by bureaucracy, all would be well.

Jaqueline writes Laika’s MedLiblog, a blog dedicated to medical information science. She submits a post entitled, “PubMed’s Higher Sensitivity than OVID MEDLINE… & other Published Clichés,” in which she shows how medical researchers doing literature searches for, among other things, meta-analyses, will stumble upon various “anomalies” in their searches of the PubMed and OVID databases, and then write additional, CV-padding papers about those anomalies. Jaqueline points out that these so-called “anomalies” are actually well-documented “clichés,” which are well-known to information specialists and anyone else who is competent in doing comprehensive literature searches. In other words, Jaqueline has documented that these meta-analysis researchers are rank amateurs at doing the most critical step in conducting meta-analyses – searching the literature for all the appropriate published studies. DrRich has always mistrusted meta-analyses, and Jaqueline has helpfully identified yet another reason to justify such mistrust. He thanks Jaqueline, and whoever planted those database anomalies which allow us to identify potentially incompetent meta-analysis researchers.

Nicholas Fogelson of Academic OB/GYN writes about taking care of the dying Jehovah’s Witness patient, or rather, taking care of the Jehovah’s Witness patient whose illness is potentially curable but who is dying because he or she refuses to accept blood products. DrRich can attest to how very difficult it is for a doctor to respect a patient’s religion when doing so results in their death. Dr. Fogelson’s description of his evolving attitude regarding this dilemma is compelling.

Need to be uplifted after reading the above post? Read Jordan Grumet’s submission from his blog, In My Humble Opinion. It’s brief and beautifully written, and it reminds us that sometimes our efforts as doctors – which all too often seem futile – can pay off in unimagined ways.

Pranab at the Scepticemia blog points to a news story about a medical school in Mumbai selling seats (that is, entry to medical school) to the highest bidder. He strongly objects to this practice, even though he postulates that his objection will make some of his readers call him “a leftist commie” (which DrRich finds to be the most common kind). DrRich does not agree with Pranab’s (tongue-in-cheek) conclusion that it is America’s fault that Mumbai medical schools are selling seats. (It is actually only George Bush’s fault.) But DrRich does agree entirely that the practice itself is an abomination. Indeed, we can all agree that entry to any career which requires a high degree of skill, talent, and/or intelligence ought to depend on merit, and nothing but merit. Can we not? Good.

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DrRich will end by noting that he is finishing this Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! Edition of Grand Rounds during the waning moments of Labor Day, which causes him to fondly recall those long-ago days of yesteryear, when the U.S. still had plenty of steel mills and DrRich was a card-carrying member of the United Steelworkers of America, and the thought of attending medical school had not yet penetrated his still-empty head. And he recalls how, while he was working one day as a lowly laborer, a union boss came over to him to explain (after DrRich had complained about it) the utility of his spending three painful days moving a large pile of slag, employing only shovel-and-wheelbarrow technology, from one location to another – AND THEN BACK AGAIN.  Now, those were the days when we knew how to make jobs!

Say, whatever happened to those steel mills, anyway?

In the wake of another sudden death in a another young athlete, the question arises – as it does after each of these tragic events – whether all young athletes should be screened for occult heart disease before participating in sports. It appears, for instance, that 16-year-old Wes Leonard had an underlying heart condition which likely could have been identified with a simple echocardiogram.

The question is controversial, and accordingly, even the professionals disagree. The European Society of Cardiology and the International Olympic Committee, for instance, recommend screening every young athlete with electrocardiograms (ECGs), and if the ECG is abnormal, following with an echocardiogram. But the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology do not recommend screening ECGs, and advocate only a medical history and physical examination – which will notoriously miss many if not most of the occult cardiac conditions that produce sudden death in young athletes.

To DrRich, of course, sorting through the controversy is mere child’s play. Allow him to explain.

The problem in answering this question stems solely from our failure to clearly identify what we wish to accomplish in establishing such a screening policy.

Those who advocate widespread screening stress the horrific nature of sudden death in vital young people.  They can fully articulate their argument simply by pointing to the awful video of young Wes scoring the winning basket to cap off a perfect season, then moments later, collapsing and dying. The scene is just too gut-wrenching to watch. Clearly, we should all want to do whatever we can to prevent such scenes from ever happening again. If Mr. Leonard had had an echocardiogram, it is likely that this tragedy might not have happened – and that should be argument enough for a widespread screening program.

For a good articulation of the alternative point of view we can begin by turning to DrRich’s colleague, Dr. Wes. Wes points to the experience of a Detroit area hospital that screened 5200 young student athletes, and identified three who had cardiac abnormalities which placed them at risk for sudden death. In finding these three individuals, the screeners not only performed ECGs on all 5200 students, but also performed nearly 1000 echocardiograms on students with suspicious ECGs, and in the process identified at least 30 students who needed even further evaluation (and possibly treatment). Evaluating these other, possibly false-positive cases not only cost money, but also subjected these young students to medical risk. Dr. Wes estimates the overall cost of this screening process at well over $600,000, and Wes is being very conservative in his assumptions.  As a result of this well-intentioned effort, it appears that several kids were told not to participate in sports any more; it is not clear that any lives were actually saved.

As it happens, a report from Israel this week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology substantiates Wes’ suspicions. According to this study, the national mandatory cardiac screening program for athletes, instituted in Israel in 1997, seems not to have reduced the incidence of sudden death in young athletes at all. The incidence of sudden death was 2.6 per 100,000 athlete-years both before and after the mandatory screening was instituted.

Does this mean that screening does not save any lives? No. It is certain that some individuals are spared sudden death thanks to this aggressive type of screening program – just not enough to affect the overall statistics. This result illustrates that when you are dealing with an event that has such a low incidence of occurrence, it is extraordinarily difficult to prove that your intervention is producing a statistically significant reduction in that incidence.

Furthermore, by definition, screening programs of any type (whether it’s screening for sudden death in athletes or screening for breast cancer) don’t change outcomes. All they do is identify people at some degree of increased risk. To change the outcomes, you have to find a way of treating the at-risk individuals you’ve identified with some process that is sufficiently effective, that itself does not worsen outcomes, and that the at-risk individual is willing and able to employ.

In the case of screening young athletes, to effect a reduction in the rate of sudden death you must either convince the young person to give up sports (not only organized sports, but all athletic activities), or find a way to make the underlying heart condition go away. DrRich understands that some of his readers might not have experience in trying to convince dedicated young athletes to stop what they’re doing and become bookkeepers, but the fact is that informing them of the risk is not always perfectly effective in changing their behavior. And while most of the cardiac conditions that produce a risk of sudden death in these young people can be managed to one degree or another, they generally are not “cured” or mitigated to the extent that athletic activity becomes risk-free.

So, while occasional individuals are likely to benefit substantially from these screening programs, if you look at it from the collective point of view these programs appear to do little or no measurable overall good, despite the high cost.

So this brings us back to the original question – should routine cardiac screening of athletes be performed? It seems clear, to DrRich at least, that the answer is: It depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

If you are asking the question from a collective viewpoint, wherein “society” will be paying the bills for the screening procedures, and thus will not have that money any longer to spend on other healthcare services that might yield a more substantial result, it is obvious (since there is no measurable benefit but a high cost) that such screening should not be done.

But if you are one of the individuals – or the loved one of such an individual – who is concerned about having a readily identifiable cardiac condition which places you at risk for sudden death, and would be willing to change your behavior if you are found to be at high risk, it would be entirely reasonable for you to want cardiac screening, and furthermore you should have every opportunity to avail yourself of that screening.

So what we have here is that very common circumstance, which modern medical ethicists insist never ever occur, wherein what is clearly best for an individual is equally clearly not best for the collective.

This situation, DrRich thinks, is analogous to the situation with smoke detectors. Smoke detectors clearly save lives here and there – we have all heard anecdotes about a family being aroused to safety by a smoke detector. But proving that the overall incidence of death from fire has been significantly reduced in the era of smoke detectors seems difficult if not impossible. And if it were society’s job to buy smoke detectors for every individual, then society would – rightly – determine that the cost is not worth the insubstantial benefit.

Yet, everybody has smoke detectors. Why?

Simply, everybody has smoke detectors because it is NOT society’s job to pay for them. The individual does. And the individual does not care that smoke detectors cost $1.2 million per life saved. They only care that the life saved, potentially, is theirs, and that owning the smoke detector that might just save their life does not cost them $1.2 million, it only costs them $19.99.

The issue of screening young athletes would be resolved if we made screening ECGs readily available to individuals for $10 at Walmart, and a follow-up echo (if needed) for $50, also at Walmart. Then individuals who decide that they wanted to know if they’re at risk for sudden death could do their own cost-benefit analysis, and if the potential benefit is worth a few dollars to them, they could buy the screening for themselves.

So screening young athletes for underlying cardiac conditions seems like a pretty good idea, just like smoke detectors seem like a pretty good idea. Where we go wrong is by making such screening a medical service, and therefore making it the responsibility of the collective to pay for it (if indeed it is to be purchased), and furthermore, making it next to impossible – and soon illegal – for individuals to pay for it themselves.

From the collective point of view, paying for the screening of young athletes makes no more sense than would collectively purchasing smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, fog lights, back-up cameras, home security systems, and a host of other personal safety-enhancers that people will happily pay for themselves, but which would be ridiculously wasteful to pay for collectively.

Which just goes to illustrate a general rule: The more stuff we collectivize, the less stuff we’ll have.

DrRich has expended a fair amount of effort explaining to his readers why it is so critically important for Obamacare (and for the Progressive program in general) to conduct a vigorous war against the obese. For the benefit of readers who may be new to DrRich’s thinking on this subject, please note the proper emphasis: This is not a war against obesity, but against the obese.

A central tenet of this war is the assertion (sometimes overt, sometimes tacit) that the obese are fat by choice, that is, as a matter of willfulness and recalcitrance. Their unsightly adiposity is a condition of their own choosing, a direct result of their having settled upon gluttony and sloth as central  life-principles. It is because of their self-indulgence that the obese have allowed themselves to become a threat to humanity, and most especially, a threat to the fiscal stability of our healthcare system and therefore our nation. They have, by their own volition, made themselves fair game for whatever actions our Central Authority may deem necessary to protect the legitimate interests of the collective against their corrosive corpulence.

When we who are thinner (and purer) go along with, and even encourage, official actions against the freedoms of fat people, we will have allowed an important precedent to become established. It will be a precedent under which our ever-wise leaders may legitimately restrict, control and tax virtually any human behavior they can claim may lead to an increased risk of healthcare expenditures.

DrRich’s hypothesis is that the real point of this war is to set this very precedent. And hence, the actual war is against the obese, and not obesity.

Any hypothesis, of course, is useful only if it helps to explain certain interesting phenomena that otherwise would be difficult to explain. And this hypothesis (as do all of DrRich’s hypotheses) does just that.

For instance, consider several recent decisions the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has made removing from the market, or preventing from entering the market, certain drugs aimed at treating obesity.

Pharmaceutical companies, in recent years, have steered hundreds of millions of dollars toward the development of drugs for the treatment of obesity. They made these investments in confident reliance on a particular premise, a premise that has been explicitly and passionately expressed in a thousand ways by physicians, government agencies, beloved public figures, the popular media, academics, public health experts, and (chances are) yo’ mama.

The Obesity Premise

This, of course, is the Obesity Premise. According to the Obesity Premise we are now engaged in a great war against obesity. Obesity, this premise holds, is perhaps the greatest threat to the health of our nation. Obesity imparts tremendous risk to the individual by causing vascular dysfunction, hypertension and insulin resistance, leading to heart attacks, strokes, peripheral vascular disease, aortic aneurysms, kidney failure, arthritis, depression, disability, and death.

It has been asserted that it would be better to receive a diagnosis of many types of cancer than it would to be obese. It has been asserted, in well-organized public service campaigns that allowing oneself to become obese is the equivalent of committing suicide (again, emphasizing the central tenet that obesity is voluntary). Because the scourge of obesity is such a grave threat to individuals and to our society, the Obesity Premise concludes, extraordinary measures are justified in fighting it.

Accordingly, our drug companies have invested many years and vast amounts of money (time and money they could have invested in banishing wrinkles, say, or creating fine and durable erections upon demand), to develop drugs for treating obesity. They have invested in this way completely assured that their efforts, if reasonably successful, would be richly rewarded in the marketplace. Thus has been the promise of the Obesity Premise.

But today, drug company executives, if they are at all astute, must surely agree with DrRich that the great premise upon which their massive efforts have relied is, in fact, not actually operational. Not even close.

Consider what has befallen drug companies just in recent weeks when they relied on the Obesity Premise:

Item 1. The August 14, 2010 issue of Lancet published the obituary for the once-sure-blockbuster anti-obesity drug rimonabant (Sanofi-Aventis). Through years and years of development efforts, and through several clinical trials, rimonabant looked very promising. It proved effective not only in producing significant weight loss, but also in significantly aiding in smoking cessation, and in improving blood lipids. It won marketing approval in Europe, and was on the verge of being approved by the FDA. But in the end, the FDA declined to approve the drug – and in 2008 the Europeans withdrew it from the market – because of strong “signals” seen in clinical trials, indicating an excess of significant depression and even suicide* among patients taking rimonabant. As a result, Sanofi-Aventis abandoned all further development efforts for rimonabant.

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* The relationship between obesity and suicide is surprising and intriguing, but has received relatively little public attention. Because this relationship could possibly be useful to the Progressives in their war against the obese, DrRich may soon write a post to help them along in their efforts.
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The recent Lancet article on rimonabant describes the results of the once-anxiously-awaited CRESCENDO study, a study designed to evaluate rimonabant’s effect on long-term mortality and morbidity. The study was ended prematurely (when rimonabant was withdrawn from the market), so only 14 months of follow-up were able to be reported. Out of over 9000 patients randomized to rimonabant, there were 4 suicides, as compared to 1 suicide in the 9000 patients receiving placebo. An accompanying editorial laments that investigators were compelled to stop the study early, since the potential cardiovascular benefit that might have been realized from the impressive reduction in risk factors among patients taking rimonabant, given another year or two of follow-up, might well have outweighed the small (and statistically non-significant) increase in suicides. The editoralists go on to observe, “However, any mortality associated with cardiovascular preventive therapy is generally viewed as unacceptable. The preventive approach is fundamentally different from curative therapy for a potentially lethal illness.”

Item 2. In October, 2010, the FDA withdrew the weight-loss drug sibutramine (Meridia, Abbott) from the market, when the post-marketing SCOUT study showed a 16% increase in serious cardiovascular events in patients taking the drug. The FDA advisory panel was split as to whether the drug should be withdrawn, but the FDA concluded that the drug was too unsafe to remain on the market. (It was originally approved in 1997.)

What most in the general media failed to report, however, was that the SCOUT study specifically enrolled patients who had preexisting cardiovascular disease, and for whom sibutramine had never been approved in the first place. In other words, it was a study designed to test whether the usage of the drug could be safely expanded to fat patients who already had heart disease. An appropriate conclusion, from the SCOUT data, would have been that usage of the drug should not be expanded to those patients. There was no apparent objective reason to take the drug away from obese patients who had no preexisting cardiac disease, and who had had access to the drug for 13 years.

Item 3. Also in October, the FDA rejected approval for the obesity drug lorcaserin (Arena Pharmaceuticals). They rejected the drug because preclinical studies showed a “signal” for an increase in breast tumors in rats.

Item 4. Again in October (truly a landmark month for anti-obesity drugs), the FDA rejected approval, for the second time, of the anti-obesity drug Qnexa (a combination of phentermine and topiramate, developed by Vivus). The drug was rated as moderately effective for weight loss, but was rejected because of concerns about cognitive disorders, metabolic problems, increased heart rate, and (most especially) birth defects.

While these are truly legitimate concerns, topiramate (the component to which most of the concerns with Qnexa are due) has been widely used for seizures, and especially for migraine headaches. While the FDA expressed special concern over the possibility of birth defects if topiramate were used in obese women of childbearing age, most migraine sufferers who take the drug are women of childbearing age.

What is the best explanation for these recent FDA decisions?

Please understand, Dear Reader, that DrRich is not necessarily saying that the FDA was flat-out wrong in rendering these decisions on any of these four anti-obesity drugs. All of these drugs posed at least the possibility of serious side effects in at least some patients, and none produced more than moderate average weight loss (though, to be sure, individual patients achieved remarkable results with each of these drugs).

Rather, DrRich is saying that the FDA’s decisions in each of these four cases were inconsistent with the Obestiy Premise, and therefore that the Obesity Premise is operationally false. That is, when it comes to actually taking action, the Central Authority entirely discounts the Obesity Premise.

The severely obese, in point of fact, do indeed have a remarkably elevated risk of developing premature, severe, disabling, expensive and lethal medical problems. Many of these individuals, in truth, would indeed be better off having many types of cancer. This aspect of the Obesity Premise is scientifically correct.*

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*There is much less evidence that people who are only moderately overweight – the vast majority of Americans said to be in grave danger due to their weight – are at markedly elevated risk because of weight alone. Indeed, DrRich has discussed evidence for the “Obesity Paradox,” whereby those who are moderately overweight appear to have improved survival compared to those of low or normal weight.
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So, at least for people who are very obese, a drug that produced weight loss but carried a small risk of potentially dangerous side effects might be justifiable, just as a treatment for cancer or heart disease might be justifiable despite a risk of serious side effects.  But this is clearly not how the authorities are treating weight loss drugs. It appears plain that in order for an obesity drug to be approved, that drug will have to display virtually no side effects. Operationally, therefore, obesity is treated as a low-risk medical condition whose treatment does not warrant any measurable risk. Indeed, obese patients are not to be allowed even the option of choosing such a drug, even after being fully informed of the potential risks and benefits.

If the Obesity Premise were operational, the authorities would have permitted studies with rimonabant – by far the most promising anti-obesity drug yet developed – to continue, in order to measure whether the long-term benefits of weight loss, smoking cessation, and lipid control outweighed what now appears to be a very small risk of excess suicide – a risk which could almost certainly be reduced even further with appropriate psychiatric screening.

If the Obesity Premise were operational, the authorities would not have withdrawn sibutramine from healthy obese patients (who had had access to the drug for over a decade) on the basis of a study which evaluated the drug in people with serious pre-existing cardiac conditions, and for whom the drug had never been approved.

If the Obesity Premise were operational, the authorities would not have banned lorcaserin for the sole reason of a tumor signal of uncertain significance seen in rats.

And if the Obesity Premise were operational, the authorities would not have denied topiramate to obese patients, when they allow the widespread use of the same drug in patients with migraines.

Undeniably, the actions of the Central Authority (as opposed to its words) entirely discount the Obesity Premise. Its actions reveal that the Obesity Premise is for public consumption – that is, for propaganda – only, and that its main purpose is to justify extraordinary measures.

The actions of the Central Authority do, on the other hand, comport with DrRich’s hypothesis – that we’re fighting a war against the obese, and not against obesity. In a war against the obese, a cure for obesity would preclude the need for strong central controls, and so would be counterproductive.

Therefore, while it goes about whipping our population into a frenzy about the scourge of obesity, the Central Authority is simultaneously doing whatever it can to stifle novel therapies that begin to attack obesity. True, none of these four drugs “cures” obesity, and none is risk-free. But the cure for any significant medical problem rarely occurs in a single step, or is accomplished without the possibility of side effects.

The Central Authority has sent a very clear message to the pharmaceutical industry: “When it comes to treating obesity, only perfection will be allowed; we insist on remarkable efficacy, and virtually no side effects. Without such a result all your efforts will come to nought.”

DrRich believes that in the last month the drug industry has heard this message loud and clear, and that it will be a very long time indeed before any more investments are made toward developing drugs to treat obesity.

By the same actions, the Central Authority has also sent a very clear message to the obese: “Do not expect any help from medical science, you self-indulgent, lazy, gluttonous budget-busters, you wreckers of society, you fattys. You did this to yourselves, by your own willful actions, and by your own actions have brought the rest of us to the brink. You deserve no more quarter than other sociopaths who undermine civil society – the bank robbers, the child snatchers, the Tea Party marchers. Because your individual choices have brought you to this juncture, prepare to be constrained in your individual choices.”

And so, in just the past few weeks, the war against the obese has seen significant victories, and has advanced ever closer to its ultimate goal.

As DrRich has noted many times over the years, “preventive healthcare services” cost the healthcare system far more money than they can ever save, and for this reason, any healthcare system engaged in covert rationing is going to have to find a way to stifle these preventive services.

Now, dear reader, before you go away angry, DrRich understands that some preventive measures are indeed very cost-effective. In fact, DrRich will now engage in a bit of cost-effective preventive healthcare: Don’t smoke. Don’t eat so damned much. And get some exercise.

There. DrRich has just successfully administered pretty much all of the truly cost-effective preventive measures known to modern medicine. (And it’s only cost-effective because the advice was free.)

All the other preventive stuff we do in medicine tends to bend the cost curve in the wrong direction.

Reasons that preventive healthcare services increase the cost of healthcare include: a) The preventive measure itself costs money. b) The preventive measure may not be effective. c) Many “preventive healthcare services” consist of some kind of screening test for “early detection,” and these screening tests almost always produce more false positive results than true positive results – leading to the need for more definitive, more expensive, and often invasive confirmatory tests. d) “Early detection” of any medical condition often detects “occult” disease, that may or may not have become manifest if it had remained undetected. e) Treating the diagnosed – and often occult – medical condition is often very expensive, produces complications, and/or is ineffective. f) Successfully preventing the target medical condition may give patients more time to consume healthcare resources for all their other medical conditions.

Please note that DrRich is not arguing here that preventive services are useless or undesirable. Often they are quite useful and very desirable. Rather, he is arguing that the healthcare system will spend more money by offering these preventive services than if it did not offer them.

This fact ought to prove embarrassing to our leaders, who have spent the last few years assuring us otherwise. Indeed, they have doggedly insisted, not only are preventive healthcare services cost-effective, but also it is precisely because of such preventive services (delivered in the remarkably efficient manner which will be achieved by our new healthcare system) that we will enjoy tremendous cost savings over the next decades.

Like Nancy Pelosi says, it’s all about “prevention, prevention, prevention.”

And having taken this bold and very public stance on prevention, our leaders are going to have to walk very gingerly (now that they have finally been successful in giving us the gift of healthcare reform), as they seek ways of cutting back on those selfsame preventive services.

They know this, of course, and have taken steps to provide themselves with the tools they will need to accomplish this feat. Their chief tool, based on what DrRich can find in the new healthcare law, is our old friend, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).

Readers may remember that it was the USPSTF that released the controversial new “recommendations” on breast cancer screening last fall. Readers will also recall that the USPSTF’s new recommendation, that women under 50 no longer need screening mammograms, proved quite shocking to many women – women who had been urged for over a decade by various cancer societies, by the government, and by their doctors to get regular mammograms beginning at age 40, because the early detection of breast cancer was the best way not to die from breast cancer. Indeed (readers will again recall), the outcry was so great that Secretary Sebelius quickly issued a statement reminding us that the recommendations of the USPSTF were merely that – non-binding recommendations – and that women should continue getting their screening mammograms as they and their doctors thought best.

DrRich wondered at that time whether Secretary Sebelius (who was simultaneously urging all of us to support the healthcare reform bills which were then making their way through the House and Senate) actually knew that both of those bills contained language making the recommendations of the USPSTF legally (and retrospectively) binding.

In any case, DrRich wishes to take this opportunity to remind his readers that the healthcare reform which is now the law of the land indeed makes the USPSTF the arbiter of which preventive services are to be covered by private insurers (Section 2713), by Medicare (Section 4105), and by Medicaid (Section 4106). To be sure, presumably to bail out Ms. Sebelius, new language was added (Section 2713) to say that the recent recommendations on mammography do not apply, at least not for private insurance plans. (Similar language, however, does not appear in the Medicare or Medicaid sections [4105 and 4106], so patients covered by these programs may indeed be subject to the new mammography recommendations .) New mammography recommendations aside, for the rest of the preventive healthcare services that exist in the universe, only those that have achieved a grade of A or B by the USPSTF will be covered.

Now that the USPSTF has been officially converted from a panel that simply makes recommendations which doctors and insurance companies can take or leave alone, into a panel that determines definitively what is covered and what is not – and indeed, into the chief tool by which our leaders will seek ways to withhold expensive preventive services – DrRich would like to very briefly restate his objections to the USPSTF’s recent mammography rulings.

In a word, DrRich’s problem with the USPSTF’s revised mammogram recommendations has nothing whatever to do with whether mammography is really useful or not, but rather, with the methodologies the panel used to make those recommendations. For, if those methodologies are deemed legitimate, unfortunate precedents will have been set. Specifically, by analyzing the USPSTF’s own justifications for making its new mammogram recommendations, it is possible to derive at least four new “rules” under which the panel can operate in the future.

1) The USPSTF now recommends that breast cancer screening no longer be done for women under age 50. But by the panel’s own words, screening mammography in women in the 40 – 49 age group appears as effective at reducing mortality as it is in women 50 and older, and the panel indicates this fact several times within its own document. And as nearly as DrRich can tell, the panel’s only concrete rationale for dropping mammography for women under 50 is that it has found “a new systematic review, which incorporates a new randomized, controlled trial that estimates the ‘number needed to invite for screening to extend one woman’s life’ as 1904 for women aged 40 to 49 years and 1339 for women aged 50 to 59 years.”

This rationale implies the following rule, Rule 1: If you have a preventive measure which is equally effective across a large population of patients, you can withhold that preventive measure from any arbitrary subgroup within that large population, as long as performing the effective measure in that arbitrary subgroup is more costly than it is for some other arbitrary subgroup.

2) In its public justification for withholding mammogram screening for women aged 40 – 49, the USPSTF did not emphasize cost savings, but rather, emphasized the fact that screening in this age group results in more false positive tests than for older age groups, and thus in more unnecessary biopsies, and the potential for more unnecessary emotional trauma. While this is true, the traditional response to such a circumstance would be for doctors to carefully review the pros and cons of screening with each woman, so as to allow the individual to decide whether the possibility of needing an unnecessary biopsy outweighs the possibility of diagnosing breast cancer while it is still curable.

But instead, the panel established Rule 2: Rather than allowing individuals to apply their own values when weighing healthcare decisions which reasonable people could decide either way, it is legitimate for the panel to make those decisions from on high for all patients; and furthermore, it is legitimate for the panel to make different decisions for different and arbitrary subgroups of patients (e.g., one decision for women 40 – 49 years of age, another decision for women over 50).

3) The USPSTF now recommends that women not be taught breast self examination (BSE). In point of fact, since most doctors stopped teaching BSE a long time ago, this recommendation will probably have little actual impact. But the panel came to this recommendation based on clinical trials conducted in backward, 3rd world healthcare systems (Russia and China), where outcomes with breast cancer have little to do with outcomes in the U.S.

Perhaps more to the point, a similar tactic was used in deciding to withhold mammogram screening for women under 50. That is, the “new randomized controlled trial” the panel invoked to justify this decision was conducted in England, where outcomes for the treatment of breast cancer are substantially – and famously – worse than they are in the U.S.

So Rule 3 is established: It is legitimate to take the results of clinical outcomes trials conducted in backward countries with poor healthcare systems, or in less backward countries which nonetheless have demonstrably inferior outcomes, and directly apply those results to coverage decisions affecting American patients who are being treated in the American healthcare system. This is like performing a careful statistical analysis of outcomes from a Pee Wee football league, then telling the New England Patriots to abandon the forward pass, because the percentages just aren’t there.

4) The USPSTF now recommends that women 75 and older not get breast cancer screening, despite the fact that (from the panel’s own words) breast cancer is the leading cause of death in this age group. The panel justifies this recommendation by noting that there are insufficient data from randomized trials in these patients, and further, that “women of this age are at much greater risk for dying of other conditions that would not be affected by breast cancer screening.”

It is, perhaps, convenient that very few randomized clinical trials assessing preventive measures have ever been conducted in elderly populations, and further, that if such trials were conducted, any actual benefit that might accrue to the subset of relatively healthy older people would be diluted by the inclusion of large numbers of less healthy elderly patients. And, while doctors usually have little problem identifying those healthy 75-year-olds who are likely to survive another 10 – 15 years, and in whom detecting early breast cancer would likely be beneficial, the large, long-term, randomized clinical trials “proving” to the satisfaction of the USPSTF that these women deserve screening will, for all practical purposes, never be done.

So, Rule #4: Preventive measures should not be offered to old people, because they’re probably going to die soon anyway.

Those who want to criticize DrRich  because they feel the USPSTF’s actual recommendations on breast cancer screening are appropriate may, of course, do so. But you will be revealing yourself as a dunderhead. For, as DrRich has just made quite plain, he is not necessarily criticizing the substance of the new recommendations, but rather, the dangerous methodologies the panel used to reach those recommendations, and the four new rules those methodologies have established. These precedents are very troublesome indeed – especially now that we’re no longer dealing with the quaint USPSTF of old. The new USPSTF has acquired broad new powers, and is no longer making mere “recommendations,” but rather, definitive coverage decisions which will directly affect all of us.

And this, it appears, will be the primary means by which our leaders will get out of providing us with all those robust preventive healthcare services they always insisted they were dying to implement.