Doctors routinely ignore the recommendations of a panel of experts when it comes to cancer tests for patients, particularly the elderly, resulting in Medicare paying for billions of dollars in services that are unnecessary.

 

Medicare spent nearly $2 billion from 2003 to 2008 on common cancer exams for people older than government-recommended age limits, according to an assessment by iWatch News. The money spent represented approximately 40% of all Medicare outlays for breast, colon, prostate and cervical cancer screenings during the five years under review.

 

In the case of cervical cancer tests, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a panel of sixteen independent medical experts, recommends that women over 65 do not need them. And yet 80% of claims Medicare received for this category of screenings were for females 65 or older.

 

The task force set 74 as the age past which mammograms are not recommended; yet more than 22 million mammograms were billed to Medicare for women 75 or older.

 

The panel has also tried to stop doctors from giving preventative screening tests to patients with advanced terminal diseases. However a study published last year concluded that 15% of terminally ill men received prostate cancer screenings and 9% of terminally ill women were given mammograms.

 

The problem exists because doctors “disregard scientific guidelines out of ignorance, fear of malpractice suits or for financial gain, as patients inundated by medical advertising clamor for extra tests,” iWatch concluded.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky