How Our Health System Screws Over Women

Should we schedule our first mammogram at age 40 or 50? Every year or every two years? And what about the cervical Pap smear? The screening that gets many women in this country to the only doctor they see on an annual basis. Should it start at 21 years old or later?  

Welcome to the latest round of Women’s Health Roulette, with ever-changing numbers declared as winners.  

It may be that more testing causes more unnecessary procedures and ultimately results in more harm to women, but everyone has a sister, aunt, mother, best friend who swears her life was saved by early detection. And although it’s hard to argue with the authoritative sound of evidence-based medicine, let’s not forget hormone replacement therapy. Scientifically “proven” in the 90s to be the completely safe and even beneficial treatment for post-menopausal symptoms, it actually caused an uptick in breast cancers, strokes and heart disease.  

So what’s a woman to do? Ideally, she’ll decide with her doctor on the timing and frequency of testing based on individual risk factors and that decision will be honored by her insurance company. But the reality may be quite different. Some of us might put off screening indefinitely. (I mean honestly, what woman can’t wait to schedule her mammogram?) Then we haven’t a clue whether insurance companies will change their policies. Currently, Medicare covers yearly mammograms, and private insurers are required to pay for them for women in their 40s, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?  

Particularly worrisome is how the debate about new screening guidelines is diverting attention from the appalling statistics on women’s wellbeing in America, conveniently being ignored in our current discussion of healthcare reform. 

In the 2009 Global Gender Gap Report issued by the World Economic Forum, evaluating the gender equity of 134 countries, the United States came in at a depressing 34^th   place, slipping from 27^th in ’08. The study examines several criteria including Health and Survival, where we rank 40^th behind Cambodia and Yemen. This category compares men and women’s longevity, considering the number of years shortened by illness, malnutrition and violence.      

Violence against women is rampant in America, fueled by recession-induced masculine insecurity and a media and entertainment industry catering to the young male market. Television shows like Criminal Minds, Killer Instinct, Supernatural and The Invasion seem to be competing with the top-billing CSI and with one another in coming up with ever more grotesque ways of slaughtering women: unleashing poisonous spiders, dicing women into pieces, impaling them on the ceiling where they spontaneously combust. You name it. Electronic gaming? Same story. In the most popular games—Duke Nukem, Road Rage 3, Grand Theft Auto— players advance by killing women, often prostitutes who beg to be slain.  

Academic research has suggested a strong correlation between on screen aggression and actions. Scientists at Indiana University’s School of Medicine studied brain waves of adolescents playing a violent video for half an hour and found an irrefutable physiological connection between the games and belligerent behavior.  

In real world America, three women are killed every day by current or former intimate partners, but unless it’s a celebrity like the late swimsuit model Jasmine Fiore, murdered by her husband, the crime doesn’t capture national attention. Domestic violence is a leading cause of death among women ages 15-44, and the leading cause of death of pregnant women according to a new report in Womensenews, using figures released by the Centers for Disease Control.