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Urologists 'Outraged' Over PSA Test Challenge
Major urology associations are fuming over a federal panel's report that discredits the widely used prostate-specific antigen screening test for prostate cancer.
If this objective panel looked at the data and found that the test doesn't work as a screening tool for a population, why are urologists fighting it? How much money do urologists and the test manufacturers going to lose?
This is another ploy by the federal government to eliminate payments under Medicare. With this kind of reporting, the next step will be Medicare not paying for screening PSA tests. There is a similar movement against screening mammography. It is all part of a larger plan aimed at decreasing Medicare payments.
Gee, at least you could have had the guts to have used the headline "Urologists 'Pissed' Over PSA Test Challenge".
As a Prostate Cancer patient and now survivor, let me add to the quarrel. It's not the test that is the problem, it is probably not its over utilization. The risk to patients comes from professionals who put profit through over utilization of invasive and risky procedures ahead of good risk/benefit analysis and patient safety. The Associations would do well to better monitor thier members and thier profession and the USPTF(?) would do well to call it what it is rather than throw out a useful tool.