Important Information and Action - You Decide
I don’t want to step on Jen-t’s post time, but this is important. On-topic discussion only, please. Here’s an email I got today:
FROM a nurse:
“I’ll never forget the look in my patients’ eyes when I had to tell them they had to go home with the drains, new exercises and no breast. I remember begging the Doctors to keep these women in The hospital longer, only to hear that they would, but their hands were tied by the insurance companies.
So there I sat with my patients, giving them the instructions they needed to take care of themselves, knowing full well they didn’t grasp half of what I was saying, because the glazed, hopeless, frightened look spoke louder than the quiet ‘Thank You they muttered.”
A mastectomy is when a woman’s breast is removed in order to remove cancerous breast cells/tissue. If you know anyone who has had a Mastectomy, you may know that there is a lot of discomfort and pain afterwards. Insurance companies are trying to make mastectomies an outpatient procedure. Let’s give women the chance to recover properly in the hospital for 2 days after surgery.
It takes 2 seconds to do this and is very important .. Please take the time and do it really quick! Please send this to everyone in your address book. If there was ever a time when our voices and choices should be heard, this is one of those times. If you’re receiving this, it’s because I think you will take the 30 seconds to go to vote on this issue and send it on to others. You know who will do the same.
There’s a bill called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act which will require Insurance Companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hosp ital 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 Television has put this bill on their Web page with a petition drive to show your support. Last year over half the House signed on.
PLEASE!! Sign the petition by clicking on the Web site below. You need not give more than your name and zip code number.
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That link didn’t work for me the first few times I tried, but when I Googled it, I got the page with that link.
My mom had a lumpectomy for breast cancer about 20 years ago. There is no way she could have gone home the same day, and that was without having a major portion of her anatomy removed. That’s major surgery! Sending someone home after an ordeal like that is just barbaric. Which made me wonder if this was just another “urban legend.” So, I went to Snopes and checked it out. Here’s what they had to say:
Claim: A bill known as the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act seeks to require insurance companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing mastectomies.
Status: True.
The examples they gave included the email I received.
Origins: In January 1997, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut sponsored H.R. 135, the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 1997, in the 105th Congress. The bill sought to “amend the Public Health Service Act and Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to require that group and individual health insurance coverage and group health plans provide coverage for a minimum hospital stay for mastectomies and lymph node dissections performed for the treatment of breast cancer.” Among other provisions, the proposed law mandated that the benefits of patients covered under group insurance plans not be restricted “for any hospital length of stay in connection with a mastectomy for the treatment of breast cancer to less than 48 hours.”
This bill was never brought to the floor for a vote after its introduction to Congress. It was referred to various congressional committees, where it languished without action until it expired with the end of the 105th Congress. Rep. DeLauro has since sponsored the same bill four more times: as H.R. 116 to the 106th Congress in January 1999 (the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 1999), as H.R. 536 to the 107th Congress in February 2001 (the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2001), as H.R. 1886 to the 108th Congress in April 2003 (the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2003), and as H.R. 1849 (the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2005) to the 109th Congress in April 2005.
In each case, the bill’s fate was the same: it languished in committee, never being brought to a vote. It was reintroduced to Congress (as the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 2007) in January 2007 — the House version (H.R. 119) was referred to the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions in May 2007, and the Senate version (S. 459) was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in January 2007.
Although most efforts to see this bill passed urge supporters to affix their names to some type of petition, we believe the most effective course of action is for advocates of this legislation to contact their congressional representative(s) directly, by U.S. mail, telephone, fax, or e-mail.
Additional information:
AMA letter in support of H.R. 536
Last updated: 7 June 2007
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2007
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
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There are links on the Snopes page to the various bills and to Rep. DeLauro which didn’t come through. If you want to use them, click the link above this section to get to their original page.
So, IMO, it won’t hurt to sign the petition, but the Snopes page advice to contact your elected reps personally sounds like the best way to support this legislation, should you be interested. Or both.
5 comments September 24th, 2007