It’s called the upsell, and these days you’ll find it everywhere.
Whether it’s a waiter that tries to talk you into a bottle of wine with your dinner or someone at the clothing store who wants you to buy a belt, tie and shoes to go with your new shirt, everyone’s looking for a way to squeeze a little extra cash out of your pocket.
We’ve come to expect the upsell in stores and restaurants.
But you’d like to think you can let your guard down at your doctor’s office. He’s not going to try to upsell you… is he?
You bet he is!
Add on services often an out of pocket expense
Docs are learning they can pocket a few extra bucks by offering add-on services that aren’t always covered by insurance. And ladies, there’s one upsell you need to know about before your next cancer screening.
It’s an add-on to the mammogram known as computer-aided detection, or CAD. Your doc will tell you it’s like having an extra set of eyes on your mammogram as the computer supposedly highlights possible anomalies.
Sometimes it’s covered by insurance, but often you have to pay for this upsell out of your own pocket.
The reason? Insurers know it doesn’t add much to a mammogram, and there’s research to back that up, too. An analysis of more than 625,000 mammograms found no difference at all in the results.1
American women have been paying out $400 million a year for this upsell. That’s nearly half a billion bucks, tossed down the drain.
The upsell that could cost you your peace of mind
And that’s hardly the only problem with computer-aided detection. The screening not only doesn’t improve cancer detection, but a study a few years back found it also significantly increases the rate of false positives.
Those false positives cause women, and those that love them, a lot of undue stress, which is bad enough. But even worse, they also lead to a 19 percent jump in further unnecessary tests and a 10 percent increase in invasive procedures, such as a biopsies, according to research published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.2
Plus, some experts fear radiologists who begin to rely on CAD could become far less careful when reviewing mammograms, leading to less accurate readings.
And it all starts with a “do you want fries with that?” style upsell.
Don’t forget, according to research published in the journal Lancet Oncology, up to 35 percent of breast cancers may go away on their own if simply left alone.3 And researchers say that the lumpectomies and mastectomies that around 60,000 American women with early stage breast cancer (Stage 0) are subjected to every year may be nearly worthless, anyway.
These invasive and disfiguring treatments leave those women with nearly the same chance of dying from breast cancer as the rest of the population, according to a study published in JAMA Oncology.4
Don’t be bullied by the mainstream. Speak to a holistic medical doctor about the cancer screening–and treatment, if any–that’s best for you.
References:
1. “Diagnostic Accuracy of Digital Screening Mammography With and Without Computer-Aided Detection,” JAMA Intern Med. 2015;175(11):1828-1837
2. “Short-Term Outcomes of Screening Mammography Using Computer-Aided Detection: A Population-Based Study of Medicare Enrollees,” Ann Intern Med. 2013;158(8):580-587
3. “Natural history of breast cancers detected in the Swedish mammography screening programme: a cohort study,” Lancet Oncol. 2011 Nov ;12(12):1118-24
4. “Breast Cancer Mortality After a Diagnosis of Ductal Carcinoma In Situ,” JAMA Oncol. 2015;1(7):888-896
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