GOP: Breast Exams Show 'Rationing'

Confusing new recommendations on mammograms and pap smears are playing into public fears about the increased role the federal government would play in health care if President Barack Obama’s health care reform efforts are successful.

Even some supporters of health care reform legislation, which faces a critical test vote in the Senate Saturday, say the recent spate of stories is damaging to the drive for an overhaul of the system.

“It is a framing issue and, boy, is it ever big,” said George Lakoff, a Berkeley linguistics professor who advises Democratic candidates on communications techniques. “What that does is open up the ‘death panels’ thing again… It gives the conservatives ammunition.”

“You do want the background trust to remain solid with respect to serious public health challenges. You don’t want to fritter that away,” said Dr. Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “What matters is the public trust in agencies like HHS, CDC and FDA. If they get skeptical or the messaging is confusing, it is bound to make health reform harder.”

Republicans quickly jumped on the recommendations against mammograms for women in their 40s, portraying the pronouncement as a first step towards government limits on health care services.

“One of the real dangers, I think, that we are talking about with this health care proposal that the Democrats have put before us is the concern about rationing,” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) on Friday, calling the mammograms recommendations “a peek under the curtain, if you will, of what we can anticipate with a government-run program.”

"This is how rationing begins,” Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said Tuesday.

“This is the little toe in the edge of the water. And this is where we start getting a bureaucrat between you and your physician. As we have gone through this health care debate over the past several months, this is what we have warned about.”

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