Shaneera Smith was trying to start a hair salon and care for her newborn daughter in March when she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.
But the Columbia resident didn’t have health insurance and struggled with doctors who wouldn’t let her charge procedures on her credit card.
Without a state financial assistance program, she “would have been pushed from doctor’s office to doctor’s office and totally tapped out financially,” said Smith, 32.
Now, she and the American Cancer Society are advocating for continued funding for the state’s Breast and Cervical Cancer program, which provides screenings and treatments for low-income women.
“There are women every day diagnosed with the disease, and to cut the funding would leave a lot of people dead,” said Smith, who had a mastectomy and is undergoing chemotherapy.
Eligible participants must be uninsured Marylanders who make no more than $26,000 a year. The program covers diagnosis procedures, treatments, medications, wigs, breast reconstruction and other related costs.
Since its inception two decades ago, more than 250,000 women have received screenings, and more than 1,000 cancers have been diagnosed, said Bonita Pennino, director of government relations at the American Cancer Society, which is also calling for more federal funding.
“There are women who will die from breast cancer because they can’t afford a mammogram [or] treatment,” she said.
For every $1 million, the state can serve about 2,000 women in need of screenings and treatment, said Patricia Hoge, chief mission officer for the American Cancer Society. Screening 2,000 women would uncover cancer in about 250 who could enter treatment earlier, Hoge estimated.
“That’s a lot of mothers, daughters, aunts, co-workers and friends that would be lost needlessly to this disease,” she said at a recent event in Baltimore.
The state’s budget for diagnosis and treatment programs in 2008 was $14.9 million, said Diane Dwyer, medical director in the state’s Center for Cancer Surveillance and Control —an increase from the 2004 amount of about $10.5 million, she said. Screenings are covered under a complex blend of state and federal funding, she said.
“We haven’t had to turn women away,” she said.
Nevertheless, she added: “We could always use more [money] to serve the women.”
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