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Monday, April 22, 2002"One key change is that Medicare will begin paying for major, sophisticated diagnostic tools for the detection of breast cancer, which strikes 90,000 Medicare beneficiaries a year. The program will cover Positron Emission Tomography, or PET, a scanning system that shows cross-sectional images of biological activity in tumors or lesions. It can detect the disease when X-rays appear to be normal. The technology gives patients and doctors "potentially lifesaving information not provided by traditional imaging," said Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson." PET scans are very expensive, and finding breast cancer early doesn't increase survival except in very rare cases. It makes no sense to have Medicare cover such a procedure for screening purposes. But, then again, as Secretary Thompson has told us before, his wife is a breast cancer survivor, so throwing money at the disease uncritically is a good thing to do. posted by Sydney on 4/22/2002 08:11:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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