The author's concern for the 41,000 annual breast cancer deaths is commendable, and one can only hope that the editors have a similar concern for the 45,000 annual deaths attributed to rationing of health care based on lack of access to health insurance.
More than 75 percent of the patients seen at the Community Health Center of the Rappahannock Region have no health insurance at all.
For these people, health care is already severely--potentially fatally--rationed.
Two different area imaging centers inform me that the cost for a screening mammogram for an uninsured patient, including the radiologist's interpretation, is between $305 and $341.
The cost to an insurance company is often less, because of contracts between the imaging center and the company, but upward of $300 is what a woman without insurance can expect to pay.
Very few of my female patients can afford that, so their breast cancer screening is curtailed without regard to whether the USPSTF recommends 30, 40, or 50 years old.
How to control the costs of health care
Disregarding the fact that many of our neighbors are already forced into a rationed health care scenario will not help solve the problem or lead to the just, efficient, economically viable solution so many well-intentioned people desire.
Donald E. Bley, M.D.
Fredericksburg
The writer is site director,