Prostate Cancer and Healthcare

E-mail to Rep. Neugebauer:

I read your latest "Roundup".

I can understand the emotional impact that your recent cancer surgery has had on you. However, I believe you are over-generalizing the public case. As I have told you previously, there appear to be two types of prostate cancer; slow-growing and fast-growing. It is unreasonable to ignore that distinction, because the great majority of men have slow-growing cancer and will die of disease or internal organ failure unrelated to their cancer.

In spite of many years of work by health scientists on cancer, we still have no complete understanding of it. Therefore as is usually the case with ignorance of an important subject, there is great emotional fear. That fear can usually minimized by further education and an analytical approach. For example, we now know that pancreatic cancer is different from brain cancer and kidney cancer. Is there no reason to believe that there are two kinds of prostate cancer? Even if there are not two kinds, the human genomic system varies from individual to individual, so that the majority of men with prostate cancer will not die of it.

A comment also on the PSA testing. Experience has shown that there are many false positives and that many persons with truly high PSAs do not actually succumb to prostate cancer.

To put things in perspective, men should not now sit around worrying whether they have prostate cancer. We have enough of this public hypochondriac attitude, which has led to the general public panic regarding healthcare and health care insurance. Men should have a routine physical checkup, at which time the functional effectiveness and health of various internal organs, such as heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, prostate, etc., should be checked.



Thanks for explaining your healthcare insurance program. It appears that your healthcare insurance provider is the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP). You pay premiums to the FEHBP, which is similar to what non-government employees pay to their private insurance companies. The question still remains as to why federal employees need to have a government-run (FEHBP) health insurance organization and will not use private insurance companies, as the rest of us do.



Thanks also for your help in detailing the Obama Administration's government-run healthcare program. "Public Option" is a misnomer. It is not at all an option. It is a mandate. Those of us who were in World War II understand mandates. It means "you will do it!", or suffer the consequences which usually meant the "stockade" (another term for jail).

Many of us agree with your position that government should not pay for abortions. However, many of us also a believe that government has no right to dictate that a pregnant woman must deliver her child. We believe in freedom of choice, as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

I agree with your general approach to healthcare. Modifications in the healthcare system would obviously be desirable, but it is up to private industry and public market demand to make any changes. Government should have no preconceived notion of how it should be run and certainly no involvement in control, other than to enforce any antitrust activities. Several antitrust laws are already in existence.