Medicare panel shocks lung cancer experts by CT screening decision

YouTube comment on USPTF from MD
Anderson – Aug. 2, 2013

MEDPAGE TODAY – May 1, 2014 – An advisory panel has recommended against Medicare coverage of CT scans to screen for lung cancer. The vote caught specialists in heart and lung disease who had made presentations before the panel by surprise. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid panel apparently did not find the evidence of the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial compelling enough to recommend coverage. That runs contrary to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which endorsed annual screening with low-dose CT scans for people at high-risk for lung cancer last December based on the trial’s data showing a 20 percent reduction in lung cancer deaths and 7 percent boost in survival overall for high-risk patients.

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Who are these people?

October 07, 2011 – By Melissa Healy/Los Angeles Times/For the Booster Shots blog

If the world of primary-care physicians had a supreme wizarding council that only weighed in on screening tests and pills promising to head off disease, it would be called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

• LA Times