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Buffalo News /Wednesday, January 9, 2008
OPINION – Another Voice / Medical care
By Patty Gelman
My life is over.
I felt a boot kick me in the stomach when I heard my breast cancer diagnosis in 2002. After a few moments, however, I was able to gain my composure, roll up my sleeves, so to speak, and pick up the shattered pieces of my life as I began to gather information and learn about treatment options.
With the support of family, friends and an excellent medical team, I could approach my disease with optimism and humor. But information and timely treatment are what really matter.
There is no known cure for breast cancer, but when it is found early – when still confined to the breast – the five-year survival rate is 98 percent. And yet many women – racial and ethnic minorities, low-income and those with little or no health insurance – don’t fall onto this optimistic statistic.
In fact, according to the Institute of Medicine, uninsured women are more likely to receive a late-stage breast cancer diagnosis and are 30 percent to 50 percent more likely to die from the disease than women with insurance.
We are allowing women to die needlessly. And even worse, we know ehat to do to fix this.
New York’s Cancer Services Partnership is the number one safety net for uninsured and underinsured low-income women to access life-saving breast and cervical cancer screening. If a woman has a positive diagnosis of breast or cervical cancer, she will be able to access treatment through Medicaid. The partnership is even able to get these women into treatment in les than seven days.
The program is funded through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state dollars. Unfortunately, less that one in five eligible New York women can access this resource because of funding and operational constraints.
New York has the tenth highest breast cancer motility rate in the country and in 2007 alone, an estimated 12,580 New York women were diagnoses, and 2,670 lost their battle with the disease.
All of the New York State affiliates of Susan G, Komen for the Cure want our state to do better. We are calling on Gov. Eliot Spitzer to create a task force charged with creating a plan for 100 percent utilization of the program by 2012.
