Despite increased risks of breast cancer with age and Medicare coverage of the procedure, nearly two-thirds of women over the age of 65 fail to get regular mammograms. Health officials from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the H ealth Care Financing Administration announced yesterday that only 37% of women receiving Medicare have had at least one mammogram within the last two years. The study also found that women between the ages of 65 and 69 get mammograms at twice the rate o f women 80 to 84, even though the chances of breast cancer increases dramatically with age. By the age of 70, a woman has a one in fourteen chance of getting breast cancer — that number jumps to one in ten by the age of 80. The National Cancer Institut e estimates that one in ten women develop breast cancer in their lifetimes.
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