Federal prosecutors dropped their investigation of Lance Armstrong on Friday, ending a nearly two-year effort aimed at determining whether the seven-time Tour de France winner and his teammates participated in a doping program.WASHINGTON – Republicans are seizing on this week’s recommendations for fewer Pap smears and mammograms to fuel concern about government-rationed medical care – and to try to chip away support by women for President Obama’s proposed health care overhaul.
“This is how rationing starts,” said Jon Kyl of Arizona, the party’s second-in-command in the Senate, during a news conference. “This is what we’re going to expect in the future.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska added, “Those recommendations will be used by the insurance companies as they make a determination as to what they’re going to cover.”
Democrats said the recommendations had nothing to do with the big health care bill. And besides, they said, the recommendations, especially one that women start mammograms at 50 rather than 40, were deeply flawed.
“It’s entirely possible that this panel got it wrong, and I think they did,” said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the vote-counting Democratic whip. Fears that the government is going to run health care have not come up during negotiations for today’s crucial procedural vote, Durbin added.
But the recommendations have given Republicans something new to talk about in making their case that the 2,074-page bill proposes government-rationed health care.
The timing of the release of both sets of guidelines this week, though apparently coincidental, couldn’t have been worse for majority Democrats. The bill faces its first survival test today, when it must win 60 votes to advance to the next step. In recent days, Democratic leaders have struggled to placate three holdouts from their caucus but appeared Friday night to be winning them over.
One Democrat wasn’t taking chances on whether the recommendations had jeopardized access to affordable mammograms. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said she would introduce an amendment that would limit the costs of the breast cancer tests for women 40 and older.
“Otherwise, insurance companies may use this new recommendation as yet another reason to deny women coverage for mammograms,” Mikulski said.
That was unlikely, the White House said.
“Under health insurance reform, recommendations like these cannot be used to dictate coverage,” spokesman Reid Cherlin said.
