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First Lady and breast cancer survivors highlight awareness
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Michelle Obama with Dr. Jill Biden highlight Breast Cancer- Getty
First lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, the Vice President’s wife, appeared today in the Jackie Kennedy garden at the White House to promote breast cancer awareness. It was a cloudy day as the First Lady approached the stage with cancer survivors as I snapped pictures on a photographer’s platform.
Three women spoke of their own breast cancer experiences and the need to change the system that has cost them and other survivors personally and financially. The stories focused on being denied coverage because of a cancer diagnosis earlier in their lives, otherwise known as a pre-existing condition.
Venus Ginés told a remarkable story about her personal experience led to founding a non-profit Latina Health & Wellness fiesta event. As a flight attendant, Venus slipped and fell on a plane prompting a trip to an emergency room where a cancerous lump was discovered in her breast. After that, Ms. Ginés focused her graduate research on cancer within the Latina community.
In 1997, Ms. Ginés founded Dia De La Mujer Latina (Day of the Latin American Woman-DML) which is in partnership with the Mexican Consulate Office, American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Latino merchants and community-based organizations. DML provides culturally specific health education and screening, follow-up and patient navigation to poor, uninsured Latinos in Atlanta, Georgia. Now, after discovering that health insurance would be too expensive in 2003, following a bout of cancer nearly a decade before, Ms. Ginés spread the event nationwide, involving over 30 cities, providing screenings for women, according to the First Lady’s Press Office.
Mrs. Obama praised the breast cancer advocates and lawmakers on hand for increasing awareness. “And today, because of that work, the number of women getting regular mammograms has dramatically increased and the five-year survival rate when breast cancer is diagnosed in time is 98%, compared to 74 % in the early 80s,” Mrs. Obama noted.
The First Lady says her husband’s health care reform would make it easier for breast cancer survivors, those living with cancer and other women who may have the disease but not know it because they cannot afford a mammogram. The Obama administration proposes a system where insurers would not be allowed to deny service based on a pre-existing condition. Mrs. Obama cited a new Health and Human Services report that suggests breast cancer patients pay a lot for treatment despite employer sponsored insurance. They “paid an average of more than $6,200 in out-of-pocket costs over the course of a year. And some wound up paying as much as $10,000 or $20,000, and 5 percent with private insurance paid more than $30,000 a year for their treatment,” the First Lady told a captivated audience.
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