Grassley to propose bill to help pay
for breast cancer treatment
Evansdale woman with breast cancer
searched for ways to pay bills.
By MADHUSMITA BORA
Courier/Medill News Service
WASHINGTON
If you can't pay for health insurance, you can't afford to suffer from breast cancer.
That's the lesson 62-year-old Darlene Pitts of Evansdale learned when she was diagnosed with the disease five years ago through a federal early-detection program. For her, the nightmare was two-fold. Besides suffering from a potentially fatal disease, she also had to find ways to pay for her treatment while supporting a family.
"I was scared and wondered where I would be able to get help or whether I would die from it," Pitts said. "The state paid for my surgery through county relief, but I don't have any money to go for my checkup now."
Pitts used to run a motel, but she hasn't been able to work since her surgery.
In March another woman from the Waterloo area, who asked to be unnamed, wrote a letter to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, describing her experience. After learning of her cancer through the federal early-detection program, she accumulated more than $70,000 in debt for treatment. Now, the woman said, she pays what she can each month, yet her bills are so high she often wonders if she should quit treatment so she will not saddle herself and her family with further debt. But she says she wants to stay alive to help her daughter take care of her 16-year-old grandson, who has cancer.
Grassley has taken over sponsorship of a bill that would provide $50 million in the first year and $250 million over five years to pay for treatment of women with low incomes who are diagnosed with breast or cervical cancer. On June 14, the Senate Finance Committee approved the legislation.
"This legislation is critical to fight against breast and cervical cancer," said Grassley. "It reaches out to the thousands of women who fall through the cracks of the current system and have no way to pay for treatment after receiving the devastating news that they have these cancers. It assures them of the treatment they need to survive."
In 1990, Congress passed the Breast and Cervical Cancer Mortality Prevention Act, which authorized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide screening services through the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program for low-income women with no health insurance.
To be eligible, women can have no greater than 250 percent of the federal poverty level. Early detection of cancer helps keep treatment costs down, officials said, but the detection program law doesn't have the critical aspect of funding for treatment.
"If diagnosed in the initial stages treatment would cost roughly between $10,000 to$25,000," said Cherry Shogren, case manager for Mercy Center for Breast Health in Mason City. "But at an advanced stage it can cost anywhere from $75,000 to $100,000."
But "diagnosis does not save people; treatment does," said Christine Carpenter, a breast cancer survivor and advocate. "I hope our lawmakers realize this soon enough." Carpenter said she could not imagine what she would have done without her health insurance.
According to published reports, the early detection program has screened more than a million women for breast cancer since its inception and has diagnosed almost 6,000 cases of breast cancer in women who are uninsured and under 65.
Four years ago, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., introduced a bill to fund free treatment for women suffering from breast cancer, but it died in committee. In 1997, Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., took up the issue, but the bill didn't make much progress. After Chafee's death last October, the Iowa Breast Cancer Coalition approached Grassley to take over the bill.
Even though the bill was approved by the Finance Committee on a voice vote, it did not make it to the floor before the Congress went into recess. Grassley said that the Senate leadership has assured him that the bill will come up for a vote before the full Senate this year. But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's staff could not give any information about when the bill would come to the floor.
"We absolutely need this bill to save women who are dying simply because they cannot afford the cost of treatment," Carpenter said.
As of June, 28 low-income women in Iowa have been diagnosed with cancer, according to Grassley's office. Last year, 533 women in Iowa alone died of the disease.
