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In a rare moment, the Oklahoma Legislature found unanimous agreement around an issue: women’s health.
Last week, House Bill 3504, sponsored by Rep. Melissa Provenzano, D-Tulsa, passed 86-0. It would require insurance companies to cover a diagnostic mammogram if ordered by a physician.
The Affordable Care Act in 2010 expanded women’s preventative health care by requiring companies to cover breast screenings. But if a screening shows an anomaly, a diagnostic mammogram is ordered for further evaluation. Not all insurance companies pay for that diagnostic test or may provide only partial payment.
That denial of coverage costs a patient an estimated $200 to $1,000 to get the cancer detection service.
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Many patients avoid that follow-up care due to affordability. In those who actually do have cancer, it will grow undetected until reaching later stages, requiring significant treatment and lowering survival rates.
The American Cancer Society lists breast cancer as the most common type of cancer, outside skin cancers. Breast cancer represents 1 out of 3 new female cancers annually.
The average risk of a U.S. woman developing breast cancer in her lifetime is about 13%. Viewed another way, there is a 1 in 8 chance an American woman will develop breast cancer.
In Oklahoma, the top rate of cancer incidence by type is breast cancer among women, at 124.2 out of 100,000 women. The next most prevalent is prostate cancer at 95.7 per 100,000 residents.
Breast cancer is the second most deadly type of cancer in Oklahoma, at 22.5 deaths per 100,000 residents. Only lung cancer tops that death rate, at 48.7.
In the U.S., men represent less than 1% of breast cancers. But men are often diagnosed at advanced stages due to the lack of screening.
This year in the U.S., an estimated 287,850 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected among women and 2,710 among men. For women, another 51,400 cases of noninvasive breast cancer is predicted.
About 43,250 American women are expected to die this year from breast cancer.
The best chance at survival is early detection. Mammograms are recommended for women over 40, but that drops to age 35 for those with a family history of breast cancer.
We appreciate Provenzano’s work on the bill and the House for passing this life-saving legislation. It now moves to the Senate, where we urge lawmakers to put the same priority on women’s health and pass the bill.
