Maggie's Farm

There is a place for you at the table with the United States Protective Services Task Force http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspstbac.htm The USPSTF concludes that the evidence is insufficient to recommend for or against routine screening for tobacco use or interventions to prevent and treat tobacco use and dependence among children or adolescents.
Grade: I Statement.

I miss my ceegars (sigh)

Yup. They're funded indirectly by the gummint, and use another gummint agency, AHRQ, as their "contractor." http://www.ahrq.gov/

Your "health care provider" uses recommendations from various agencies for prevention, screening and treatment (Along with their own judgement, when they can). Many of the agencies are specialty physician groups, such as the American Urological Association http://www.auanet.org/content/clinical-practice-guidelines/clinical-guidelines.cfm, which issues guidelines on such matters as screening for prostrate cancer. Since insurance companies, like Medicare and TriCare (the two largest) don't like to pay more (or more often) for your healthcare than they can get away with, physicians and other providers need to pay attention to them, or THEY won't get paid! What better recommendation agency could an insurance company hope for to help lower costs than one they control? You guessed it, USPSTF.

Some of their recommendations are useful, some are good counterpoises against other agency's guidelines, and some cause an outcry, such as the changed recommendations for breast cancer screening.

They cite nice references within their decisions, but I've found at least one instance where it appears they didn't consider studies that other agencies used; or the studies were considered low quality. USPSTF will make note of the low quality of the studies, but they use them anyway.

Maybe one of my fellow farmers, here at Maggies, can explain a little about how this works.

Remember, school is in every single day for us while the ObamaCare crowd is still in power.

(Sorry I'm such a windbag, BD)