Women won’t pay higher health bills simply for being women, and they will be able to get the medical care they need, particularly for breast cancer, under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), a leading women’s advocate says. “The Affordable Care Act will help us realize the promise of access for all,” said Eleanor Hinton Hoytt, president and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative in Washington, D.C., which was founded 30 years ago as the National Black Women’s Health Project.
Open enrollment began this week under the ACA. Uninsured and underinsured Americans will gain greater access to a medical home with preventive care that can reduce the risk of a host of conditions including breast cancer, the second leading cause of death among women. “We know that prevention works, and mammogram screening is an essential health-care benefit,” said Hoytt, adding that Congressional efforts to stall or kill the ACA as part of a federal shutdown are “unconscionable.”
Black women are number two behind white women for developing breast cancer, but the gap is narrowing, according to a new study released this week for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. They are the only group of women to show increases in breast cancer — up 0.2 percent each year between 2006 and 2010 — and they also have the highest death rate. The American Cancer Society published the study, “Breast Cancer Statistics, 2013,” in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians and in aconsumer version.
Under the new healthcare law, women who are 40 and older are entitled to coverage for mammograms. Those who have a family history of breast cancer or ovarian cancer can also receive free counseling and testing for mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Women with mutations are five times more likely to develop breast cancer — a fact highlighted by actress Angelina Jolie’s double mastectomy earlier this year.
Women facing genetic tests ranging up to $4,000 and other costs associated with breast cancer won’t have to worry about annual or lifetime spending limits, beginning in 2014. “You can now be insured with pre-existing conditions,” Hoytt notes. “You do not have to be afraid of being dropped from your insurance.”