Political Leaders Can Kiss My Ass!!!!

Today's post will have a bit of a different tone than most. A few days ago, I read about how politicians have been suggesting that mammograms only become routine after age 50, in order to decrease spending with the pending Health Care bill. Now, I don't normally get political, because I feel like most of the time I don't know what the heck I'm talking about, but today I do, and so I'm going to.

I'M PISSED. Why? Because my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 47. If the starting age of screening had been 50, my mother's breast cancer would have had 3 years to progress before being caught. At that point, it is highly likely that it would have metastasized to other areas in her body, even given the fact that her cancer was slow-growing. Once cancer spreads, treatment becomes much more difficult, invasive, and likely to fail. Heck, any tween that watches Grey's Anatomy now knows the dangers of letting cancer progress by now.

Now, I'm all for cutting government spending on the whole, but this is taking money from the wrong place. Everyone knows that one of the biggest drains of federal funding is the rampant inefficiency of our political system. Every bill has tons of amendments tacked on, just to ensure that it passes. Politicians spend millions of dollars on campaigns, rather than productively using funding from private and public sources. And we have no idea where and how money gets spent amongst government employees, but barely any of it seems to be making it to the lower-most rungs.

And yet, where do they think they should cut expense?? MAMMOGRAMS!!! How can anyone be so callus? So willing to ignore any and every piece of research that has shown the benefit of early screening? Crossing your fingers that victims of breast cancer under the age of 50 will be able to find the tumor via self-examination in time is absolutely heartless. I'm utterly ashamed of anyone who supported this measure.

Apparently, I've picked my battle.

Love,
Katie