Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act

There's a bill called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act which will require Insurance Companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy. It's about eliminating the 'drive-through mastectomy' where women are forced to go home just a few hours after surgery, against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes still attached

Lifetime TV (I know "guys", Lifetime hates "us"...but this is a good cause) lays out this issue very well 'The Re-Introduction of The Bipartisan Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act'.

This bill has been introduced during each Congressional session since 1997 (1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2005). Each time, unfortunately, the bill dies in committee. It has been submitted again during the current legislative session as "The Breast Cancer Protection Act of 2007"   

Lifetime does have an online petition (much like an email petition),   however, there is no way to verify signatures or prevent multiple   "signings". A more productive approach to getting this, or any   legislation passed would be for interested voters to contact their elected representatives   directly. Click the following links for contact information for SENATORS   and REPRESENTATIVES.

 

Those interested in tracking the progress of this latest attempt at   passage, can click HERE   for Senate action, and HERE   for the House version.

The above information came from HERE, and in my opinion does not dilute the importance or effectiveness of Lifetime's petition, it's additional "insurance" and "assurance" of getting the JOB done. Our elected officials are getting the best care available, yet when it comes to us "commoners", it's a crap shoot on the crap table of the insurance companies. 

Comments

[granny]

I love finding this posted this morning. I had just been thinking about Dick Cheney's health care,which is likely the best available,and how much of it is being paid for by US - regardless of his abiliity to pay; while my care is limited by edict,and or cash available, not need.

[Ted K.]

....this is probably true of the House and Senate members as well.

It also leads me to think of their retirement plan and how that program is such a better deal compared to Social Security, which is a complete and total screw job of retirement funds.

But Dick Cheney is a jerk, and that is all that really matters, right?

[granny]

Wrong

[George]

Ted, good point. Dick Cheney is a jerk. And indirectly a serial murderer as well. But directly a jerk.

[Ted K.]

Indirectly a Serial Murderer?
George you are such the confirmed progressively liberal Hack.

Give me a break.

How do you function in life without rational thought?

[aravella]

In my opinion this issue shouldn't even be a political one (mastectomies don't have a party) , but that would be in some perfect compassionate world.

It seems to me that a mastectomy must be a traumatic experience both mentally and physically for a woman. Thought's of feeling "less than a woman", reconstruction surgery, becoming intimate again with their significant other etc... I wonder if men had "the boys" removed as often as mastectomy's are performed, if we would be having this conversation.

Let's face it, everyone handles things differently, how can we set up a cookie cutter procedure i.e. admit to hospital; operation; release? We need to knock the "4th branch" of government (insurance companies) down a few notches.

If you feel the hospitalization time for a mastectomy operation should be between the doctor and the patient, take action.