Today Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009 in our local paper, on the TV News and in the L.A. Times was an AP column on the new USPSTF (U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government agency) announcing a complete reversal of policy dealing with breast cancer. The new guidelines are telling women who are forty that self examinations are a waste of time and that women need not be taught to do them, that mamograms are not needed until age 50 and then only every other year. That the old policies were to expensive and led to to many false positives and not beneficial. We disagree, we know several who are alive today because they were doing their mamograms, self examinations and regular check ups on an annual basis.

As my wife (a breast cancer survivor) and I read the column it became blatantly clear that it has begun, by that we mean the government has begun to minimize the importance of health care, trying to get the public used to the idea of lower standards, just as the instructions were written by Sol Lewensky in the "Leftist's Radical's Handbook" back in the sixties. I'm not sure of the exact spelling of the author's name or the exact wording of the title. I own the book, have not read it since about 1980 and it is in my other office in Camarillo, CA., otherwise I would quote it page and paragraph (perhaps in my next blog). The point is, the overhaul of the healthcare system is not yet a reality but the government is so convinced that it will happen that they are going forward just as though it was a reality.

If my wife had not done self examination and found those lumps in her breast (that the Doctors had missed) she may well have been dead today.

When I started this blog it was simply a form of a diary, it was not meant to be political or a right wing scare page but this newspaper column is what I refer to as an "Indicator Item" that tells us what the latest trend is, what the future is going to be. This column was so filled with red flags that I could not ignore it, I needed to express the deep feelings of fear of the direction our country is headed. For forty plus years it has been Ok in this country to eliminate the unborn as a matter of convenience and now we have begun the process of shortening the lives of the elderly (also for the convenience of others). Babies and the elderly cost the government a great deal of money, so much more than those in between, so the pragmatist progressive justifies these acts of inhumanity, they are moving forward with the program. Once they have governmental control of the entire healthcare system, I fear we shall see that the seniors will see their healthcare benefits reduced, delayed, denied and tied up in a bureaucratic nightmare. Since breast cancer is the most common cancer and the second leading cause of death by cancer in women the The American Cancer Society is opposed to these governmental guidelines (that may become the rule in the new healthcare reform bill) and I agree with the Cancer Society.

Curtis Hermann Nov. 19, 2009