New Breast Exam Guidelines Threaten Health Insurance Coverage
Posted in Health Insurance
November 20th, 2009
After new breast exam guidelines were released that encouraged women under 50 not to get mammograms, rumors have surfaced that health insurance coverage for the breast exam would be threatened. Now, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is trying to dispel those concerns.
The New Guidelines
On Monday, Nov. 16, 2009, new guidelines were released by a federal task force that reversed the recommendation for women in their 40s to get their annual mammograms. In addition, the panel suggested that women ages 50 to 74 get their mammograms every other year, instead of every year.
According to the panel, the decision to release the new guidelines based on a desire to strike a better balance between the benefits of early cancer detection and the unnecessarily imposed anxiety – as well as extra costs – associated with false positives.
The Debate over Health Insurance
Since the task force has made this recommendation, the public has not only become enraged over a decision to eliminate early detection for a deadly illness, but women have become concerned that their health insurance would no longer cover the procedure if they’re younger than 50.
Sebelius ensured the public days after the task force made the announcement that it doesn’t set federal policy, nor does it determine what services are covered by federal government. She also noted that she would be very surprised if private insurance companies changed their coverage of mammograms based on what the task force has released.
Since the mammogram is still an option for many health insurance plans, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Radiology are recommending that women aged 40 and up still get their breast exams despite what the task force has released. The two organizations note that breast cancer is still a huge risk for women in their 40s and opportunities for early detection should not be ignored.