| NBCC has made passage of the Breast and Cervical Cancer
Treatment Act (H.R. 1070/S. 662) one of our highest priorities
for the remainder of the 106th Congress. This legislation would
close a critical gap in an existing federal policy (established by
Congress in 1990) that screens low-income women for breast and
cervical cancer, and then leaves them to scramble for treatment
that is becoming increasingly difficult to secure.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC)
Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (BCCEDP)
currently relies on an ad-hoc system of charity care to treat
women diagnosed through the program. The current strategy
for finding these women treatment is fragile and deteriorating.
Resources are being diverted away from the screening program
which is currently only able to screen about 15% nationally of
the women who are eligible.
Patients from all over the country who have been screened
through this program, BCCEDP coordinators and physicians
providing charity care to the women the program has diagnosed
have testified about the vital need for the treatment component
that passage of the Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Act
would provide. |
