ACG applauds Obama's support of colorectal screenings
September 14th, 2009 by Jennifer Walker-Journey
In his health care speech last week to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama argued that “there is no reason we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense.” It makes sense, too, to the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG), which has long supported the lifesaving potential of screening by colonoscopy specifically because it can detect and remove pre-cancerous polyps and thereby prevent the development of colorectal cancer.
The New England Journal of Medicine says that a colonoscopy colorectal cancer screening is one of the few preventive services shown to reduce future health care costs.
“We know screening for colorectal cancer is good health policy, and makes good economic sense,” commented ACG President Dr. Eamonn Quigley. “When screening procedures detect colon cancer early, nine of ten patients beat the disease. In the absence of screening, colon cancer is usually found too late and many patients die. Those are starkly different outcomes that we have the power to change.”
It is the racial minorities, uninsured Americans and Medicare patients who should be tested but are not being screened appropriately, according to the ACG. ACG is committed to national policy changes to improve access to colorectal screening and increased use of these proven prevention strategies, including reversing Medicare’s massive cuts to reimbursement for these tests since the benefit was first introduced, as well as to payments in the ambulatory surgery centers where many screening tests are performed.
“We can point to impressive milestones indicating a trend moving in the right direction, yet much work remains,” Dr. Quigley said. “We will continue to champion the lifesaving potential of colonoscopy and work to expand access to lifesaving screening tests.”