Women's Cancer Recommendations Stir Controversy Amid Senate Vote

Nov. 21, 2009— -- Health care reform gets its first real test in the Senate today. After a rare Saturday session, the Senate will vote tonight on whether to push the reform bill to the next level and bring it to the Senate floor for official debate.

The bill would insure an additional 31 million Americans at a cost of nearly $850 billion. It would be paid for in part by increasing taxes on those making more than $200,000 a year.

Republicans are uniformly against the bill, so Democratic leaders need all 60 members of their caucus to vote in favor of the bill tonight in order to stop a Republican filibuster and move the bill forward.

But two new sets of recommendations for cancer screenings released this week have complicated the health care debate even further.

The first study released by a quasi-government panel called The United States Preventive Services Task Force said that women no longer need to get annual mammograms to detect breast cancer until they are over the age of 50. The second report came out Friday, issued by a different group, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Their report says women do not need to get their first pap exam to screen for cervical cancer until they are 21 years old and, after that, only need to be screened once every three years as opposed to an annual exam.

Both studies fly in the face of everything patients have been told by doctors for years in order to prevent their chances of getting cancer: Get screened, early and often. So patients and doctors have been left confused and frustrated.

Linda Benitez is a breast cancer survivor. She told ABC News, "Whoever is coming up with this ridiculous recommendation, I think they need to think twice."

Dr. Peter Jokich, a physician at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said, "I think it's totally ridiculous. I may not be politically correct, but I think this is really about money and politics. It's about the beginning of rationing care."

Republicans seized on those concerns and are pointing to the cancer screening guidelines as a big "I told you so."

John Kyl, a Republican senator from Arizona, said the guidelines point to the future of health care in the U.S.

He said, "This is how rationing starts."