The medical profession and public health establishment have been adamant about one idea for many years, about cancer specifically and our health more generally.
But if the system that is set up to do the detecting is flawed, even this simple mantra is woefully ineffective.
American women have been trained over the past decades to have regular mammograms, starting at age 40, in hopes of detecting breast cancer early enough to treat it successfully and with minimal surgeries.
The rate of Utah women receiving mammograms is not what it used to be and not what it ought to be. We’re 44th in the nation. And we have the fourth worst rate of breast cancers detected at a late stage. But it is still a great improvement over a system that doesn’t find tumors until they are advanced.
More recently, though, some doctors and patients have come to realize that, for as many as half of American women, the traditional mammogram is not enough. Women who have denser breast tissue can too easily confound the normal scan, leaving cancer to go dangerously undetected.
Women who have learned that they are in that category are, in some states, directed to seek another level of testing — an ultrasound or one type or another of an MRI.
In Utah, not so much. And that’s bad.
Concern for a high rate of false positives, higher cost and just plain “But we’ve always done it this way,” have combined to exclude Utah women from these necessary screenings.
Some progress is being made. The Utah Legislature in 2023 required that women receiving mammograms be informed if they have the kind of dense breast tissue that indicates a need for further tests. On the federal level, the Food and Drug Administration just this month implemented a similar rule.
That improves awareness, and that’s good. But it doesn’t help with the cost.
That’s where the bipartisan Find It Early Act comes in. That’s a bill now before Congress that would require insurance plans to cover the costs of breast ultrasounds or MRIs where individual circumstances warrant.
So far, none of Utah’s congressional delegation is listed as a co-sponsor. They should get behind it.
Early detection is key to saving both money and lives. We shouldn’t pretend to know that if we aren’t willing to do it. And to pay for it.
