Important vote on March 31 for national screening

jillpls

Hi everyone,
Everyone deserves to be screened. Please help with this vote. Go to www.CoverYourButt.org and learn about our Congressional call in on March 31 – People are working to pass a national colorectal cancer screening program for the un/under-insured, and every voice counts. You can get an automatic reminder by texting BUTTIN to 30644 Get friends and family to call on March 31st too. Seriously, every call matters. Thank you for taking the time to check it out.
CC survivor Jill

dianetavegia

So important!
We should all send this out to our email pals and post on other non cancer boards to enlist help on this! This is a national health crisis and not just affecting the few of us!

I'm going to put this on my blog that has over 218,000 hits and hope I can generate a few calls.

TO REMIND YOURSELF: You can also sign up for Memotome.com for free and get reminders on doc appts., birthdays, etc! I've used them for years!

Thanks for doing this, Jill!

Diane in Georgia

jenben59

dianetavegia said:

So important!
We should all send this out to our email pals and post on other non cancer boards to enlist help on this! This is a national health crisis and not just affecting the few of us!

I'm going to put this on my blog that has over 218,000 hits and hope I can generate a few calls.

TO REMIND YOURSELF: You can also sign up for Memotome.com for free and get reminders on doc appts., birthdays, etc! I've used them for years!

Thanks for doing this, Jill!

Diane in Georgia

I received an E-mail...
...about this and will send it out. Yes, I believe that most people think it's embarrasing to get a colonoscopy and don't want to talk about it. I was really shocked when I joined this site and found so many young people with colon cancer. I thought it was an "old timers" disease, til I got it. So many insurance companies do not pay for it til your 50 or older. If these companies want to "save money" and "cut corners" they need to cover younger people for any colon testing and catch it early.
On another note, I'm sick of law suits against doctors. Just like any other businesses there are legitimate lawsuits, but we will lose the best of the best if the "blow-off" laws suits aren't stopped. Since when is science 100%? Science changes, advances, etc. Again, there are some legitimate lawsuits...they amputated the wrong leg...but to think doctors can cure 100% of every disease, injury, birth defect, etc. is just being ignorant.

usakat

Not to be a buzz kill....but....
If you are thinking of supporting this "Call on Congress" I urge you to READ the bill BEFORE you lend your support. I'm sure everyone is thinking that if it's legislation that has anything to do with CRC it must be good, right? Maybe....

What is important to know is this piece of legislation, H. R. 1189: Colorectal Cancer Prevention, Early Detection, and Treatment Act of 2009 ( http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1189 ), is an APPROPRIATIONS bill, which means this legislation authorizes the government to spend money. How much money? 50 million dollars in fiscal year 2009, increasing incrementally each year until fiscal year 2013, when it will reach 250 million Federal taxpayer dollars. The bill is to "provide States the option to provide medical assistance for men and women screened and found to have colorectal cancer or colorectal polyps." - HR. 1189. The bill requires participating states to provide matching funds (one State dollar for every 3 Federal dollars), which means if your state accepts grant money for this program, your state tax dollars might also be appropriated, although public and/or private charitable donations may be used as matching funds.

In 2002, according to the December 2004 issue of Gastrointerology, 2.8 million sigmoidoscopies were performed in the U.S. in 2002 and 14.2 million colonoscopies were performed in the U.S. in 2002. According to the CDC, "in 2002, a total of 139,534 adults in the United States had colorectal cancer diagnosed, and 56,603 died." - (see: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5511a4.htm). So I suppose you could say that for every 101-102 colonoscopies performed, one person was diagnosed with CRC.

My concern at this point is how many cases of CRC and CRC deaths will 750 million dollars prevent (total appropriation amount between FY2009 - FY2013)? How much of the 750 million dollars will ACTUALLY go towards patient care and not bureaucratic red tape? I suppose these are the 750 million dollar questions that I would like answered before committing to so much more government spending at U. S. taxpayer expense, especially during this time in history of unprecedented government spending...but that is just my humble opinion.

Again, just my humble opinion, I would sooner have ACS be given the 750 million dollars for CRC prevention and treatment - I know they would make much better use of the money.

Please READ the bill before you decide to support this bill or not, and follow your heart and follow your conscience. Democracy is GREAT!

Oh, and one last thing, I do support the good works of C3-Colorectal Cancer Coalition. They are a great awareness, advocacy and lobbist group that support CRC issues here in the U. S. I appreciate their hardwork and dedication to such an important cause...even though I will not be calling on my Congressional representatives on this one...at least for now...

spongebob

NOT JUST TRYING TO KEEP THE PEACE AT HOME, BUT(T)...
I have to agree with Katie (which is always a good thing when you agree with your wife, I guess)!

Taking Katie's number out another order of magnitude, for every 100 +/- colonoscopies done in the US, 1/3 of one person will die. I realize that, if you are that 1/3 of a person, that's a pretty significant stat, but in the grand scheme of things is that a sufficiently statistically viable number to hand-out so much taxpayer money on?

I think I have been pretty loud and clear on my position with regard to the need for people UNDER 50 to get screened for CRC - mostly because I was diagnosed at 36, three years AFTER asking to be screened and being told I was too young.

When I was a search and rescue mission controller at the US Coast Guard Rescue Coordination Center in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and later when I was the Chief Instructor at our National Search & Rescue School, I routinely wrestled with the issue of when to recommend suspending an active search for a person or people. It was a heart-wrenching responsibility, but there eventually comes a time when the law of diminishing returns comes into play and you need to ensure you have sufficient resources for the next case that comes along. If this were not the case, the Coast Guard would still be scouring the Gulf of Mexico searching for three missing NFL players.

So where do these two ideals meet? "Get screened early" and "Don't use my tax dollars to rescue that .033% group." The two ideals merge in the notion that, maybe this isn't the best way to skin the cat here (I hereby apologize to all cat lovers - and my two cats, Baby & Bitty-Bit - for that cruel cliche). For instance:

1. Why is the Center for Disease Control and Prevention the agency handing out these grants instead of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)?

2. Why not merely use this federal money to restore that chunk of the NCI's budget that has been cut for the last several years? Did you know that the NCI has lost some 30% of its funding? Not a popular Bush initiative for me.

3. What makes the state government best poised to administer a program like this? Why not a not-for-profit CRC enterprise? Typical overhead for managing a program like this is on the order of 30%+

4. What about those states that already have a similar program already in effect like California with MediCal or Virginia?

I realize that, on it's face, legislation to create a national colorectal cancer screening program for the un/under-insured sounds great, but is this REALLY the way to invest our resources? What is the cost versus gain? What are the possible long-term impacts that people aren't looking at because they don't see the forest for the tree?

If you think this sounds like a good idea - and I'm not saying it's a BAD idea, in principle anyway - then I say push your representative(s) in DC to vote for it. But if you're like me, and think that it may not be the right way to spend OUR money, let your voice be heard as well. The important thing is, know what you're asking your representatives to support and consider the impacts that may not be quite so obvious.

I'm not saying you should do one or the other - just throwing out some food for thought.

- SB (as in [S]ynical Bastar...)