Think Pinker

According to Business First the Department of Health is reducing the number of facilities that will be funded to do breast cancer surgery. This means that women who are relying on Medicaid to cover their surgery will have 52 fewer hospitals to choose from. That could also leave women in some areas without a hospital nearby.

The changes took effect on March 1st. Now hospitals must have performed at least 30 breast cancer surgeries in the past year in order to continue receiving funding. This will be the new criteria that is used to decide which hospitals Medicaid will continue to fund.

Government claims that the reason behind these reductions is actually to help women receive better care, although how they imagine that can occur with fewer participating facilities is a bit of a mystery. It seems the hope is improved services will be available at the facilities that are covered because expertise will be better clumped.

How this will affect women won’t be seen for some time. It’s really a guess at this point whether the impact will be negative or not. One has to believe that the government is not doing anything that will jeopardize American women’s chances for quick intervention once breast cancer has been diagnosed, and thus a better prognosis for a full recovery.

If women are now going to have to wait to receive their surgery because fewer facilities will be trying to handle more of the work. then there could be trouble. Let’s hope that’s not what the outcome is. In the meantime we will just have to take a wait and see.