Obama administration quietly approves new Obamacare loophole benefiting insurance companies.

[Ms. Toad]

54. For one thing, all colonoscopies are not equal.

Most colonoscopies are looking primarily for polyps - or malignant lesions associated with polyps. Those are relatively easy to spot and most can even be spotted using a newer camera colonoscopy. I'd be just fine with those for my own screening. I get my colonoscopy at a stand-alone facility dedicated solely to doing colonoscopies - at the lower end of the pricing range - for my once every 10 years screening.

My daughter, on the other hand, needs someone who really knows what they are looking for for her annual screening. She is likely to develop flat lesions - which are much harder to spot. Worse still, she is likely to develop dysplasia before the lesions which is typically not visible to the eye. Her risk for colon cancer is approximately 50% by now (and will increase every year). She needs approximately 40 biopsies at ever colonoscopy - with the theory being that if they grab 40 snippets each year the odds of catching the dysplasia before it becomes malignant are much better even if they are just randomly grabbing snippets. She has hers done at a world class medical facility, by people who work specifically with her two-disease combination. The price for that is at the high end of the scale - both because of the specialists and because of the increased number of biopsies she needs. She needs to not be forced to a facility like where I have mine done because it would put her life at risk. And - because she already has far more medical expenses than most people every single year (because she will hit the out of pocket maximum every single year), forcing her to pay more merely to have access to quality of care she needs just exacerbates that discrepancy.