Your Money or Your Life for Mammogram Change?

Are the new guidelines on breast cancer checkups really going to save the health care system much money?

Hospital prices for the test vary widely. A check of hospitals in Chicago showed most in the range of $100 to $200. That's hardly the most expensive medical procedure and not a big profit driver, says Shawn Farley, a spokesman for the American College of Radiology.

In fact, free-standing clinics lose money on mammograms because the reimbursement rate is so low. The average Medicare reimbursement for a mammogram is $89, Farley says.

"This is not the latest supertechnology thing that just came out of the labs and costs millions of dollars," Farley says. "These are meat-and-potatoes exams."

Farley's organization represents the doctors who give the 37 million mammogram exams in the U.S. each year. It's not a surprise that they would oppose the notion that the recommended age for women to get mammograms be raised to 50 from 40.

And it's not a leap to hear that other opponents are the companies who make the machines, like General Electric Co., Siemens AG, and Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV. The machines range in price from $250,000 to $750,000 for the latest digital models.

"There is considerable evidence breast-cancer screening saves lives in a wide range of populations," GE says in a statement. "The (new) recommendations diverge from trends in countries with established national breast-cancer screening programs, where the trend of many governments is toward screening earlier and on an annual basis similar to the longstanding success of the screening program in the United States."

The recommendation was made this week by a panel that advises government health officials. The radiologists' group has asked Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to disavow the recommendation so insurance companies don't refuse to cover the exams. "Countless American women may die needlessly from breast cancer each year," the doctors' group says in a statement.

Insurance companies say they haven't made any decisions on coverage yet.

"For right now, we're keeping it the way we have it," says Scot Roskelley, a spokesman for Aetna Inc. Plans that have preventative coverage pay for mammograms, he says.