It’s been kind of quiet around the Public Square on WordPress and that’s mostly because I’m back full time at the college after a year of sabbatical and am just getting up to speed with classes, students, committee work while trying to keep an active hand in at SexInThePublicSquare.org (our very exciting community-building site).
One of the wonderful things about being back in the classroom, though, is that students share information that I wouldn’t necessarily have heard about. Just today a student passed along to me a link to a petition sponsored by Lifetime that calls for passage of legislation to guarantee that health insurance companies pay for at least two days of hospitalization for women who have mastectomies. This is to guard against the health insurance companies’ desires to limit coverage to one day or even to outpatient classification.
Outpatient mastectomies? We’re talking major surgery here. Removal of a breast is not an uncomplicated thing, nor is the aftercare required in the days immediately following the surgery.
And this year’s legislation isn’t the first time the issue has been raised in Congress. Not by a long shot. Not by a decade, in fact. For the past 10 years Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has been trying to get legislation passed in Congress that would mandate insurance companies to pay for at least two nights of hospitalization for women having mastectomies. She has introduced her bill, called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act, five times. Each time it has been consigned to languish in committees.This year she has agan reintroduced the bill. It is HR 758 this time around, and again it has been assigned to several committees. In fact, here’s the list of committees to which it has been referred before action can be taken:
House Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health
House Education and Labor, Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions
House Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Health
The corresponding Senate bill (S. 459 ) has also been assigned to committees: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Lifetime has a petition in support of this legislation and of course I encourage you to sign it. But sometimes petitions are not enough. Clearly this is one of those times. What we need now is a direct call-in, letter-writing, and email campaign.
Click here to locate your Senators and Representatives. Call them or email them to tell them, very simply, that you don’t think that mastectomy should ever be an outpatient or overnight procedure and that insurance companies should not be allowed to override doctors when it comes to providing proper care for a patient.
Mastectomy surgery is major surgery. Women need the kind of care that can best be provided by nurses and doctors in the days immediately following a mastectomy.
These bills will be allowed to expire in committee again, for the fifth time, if we don’t loudly draw attention to the issue.
If you do write, I encourage you to leave a copy of your letter as a comment here. That will help others who want to write but aren’t sure how to get started.
Sex in the Public Square 