Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Written by Sheraden Kimball, Former Student on Monday, October 21, 2013
At the SHS football game on Friday, cheerleaders used pink pom-poms, fans sported pink attire, and the football team added a little pink to their uniforms in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month to honor those affected by the disease.
Along with kicking off Breast Cancer Awareness month, October 1 marked the first day that uninsured Americans could visit online marketplaces, also known as “exchanges”, and purchase insurance coverage through their state.
This is a result of The Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Many cancer patients are wondering how the new healthcare law will affect them. The Affordable Care Act will bring many benefits to both cancer patients and cancer survivors.
More survivors will be able to get care as insurance companies will be banned from dropping beneficiaries if they develop cancer. No company can reject someone for having preexisting condition such as breast cancer.
According to an Affordable Care Act representative, health plans won’t be permitted to establish lifetime dollar limits on coverage, meaning companies cannot set a limit on the amount they spend on the benefits for customers. This guarantees that people with cancer have access to necessary treatment throughout their lives.
The abolishment of annual dollar limits takes effect in 2014. Patients won’t necessarily be forced to leave their current insurance plan if they don’t want to. “At the grocery store, you don’t have only one brand of cereal to choose from. Same with the marketplace. Individuals are able to choose what insurance plan best fits their needs or concerns,” said the representative from the Affordable Care Act.
However, there are politicians, such as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who have gone to great lengths in order to repeal The Affordable Care Act. He led the charge on the recent government shutdown in an effort to get rid of Obamacare. Cruz told ABC News he “would do anything” to stop Obamacare. Politics aside, people from all around the country are coming together to bring awareness.
One in eight women will develop breast cancer some time in her life. However, scientists are discovering more and more ways to prevent the disease.
Early this year, the American Society of Clinical Oncology recommended doctors consider prescribing a drug called exemestane, used on breast cancer patients, to postmenopausal women who are at risk. The drug reduced the risk of ER-positive breast cancer by 73 percent in a clinical trial that compared exemestane with a placebo.
But there are more extreme ways to prevent the disease. Actress Angelina Jolie recently made the decision of receiving a double mastectomy that decreased her chances of developing breast cancer from 85 percent to below 5 percent. "I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer," Jolie wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.
Jay Orringer, the doctor who performed Jolie’s reconstructive surgery, came out and said that her choice of making the surgery public has inspired his patients to get gene tested, which The Affordable Care Act will indeed cover.
