October 2020.
When my aunt received her breast cancer diagnosis, it was a long chain of unsavory memories that would come to haunt us. I also remember the bills – there were so many, and although her insurance was good, it still made for an extra headache at an already trying time.
That isn’t the case for thousands of breast cancer victims and survivors all across the country. Shoddy insurance coverage and expensive premiums can leave patients on the hook for the treatments and medications they need to combat breast cancer, and out-of-pocket costs are simply too much to bear.
My aunt is one of the 3.5 million women in the U.S. who have had their lives devastated by breast cancer. About one in eight women will have invasive breast cancer in their lifetime, with well over 300,000 new cases projected for 2020 alone. This same year, more than 42,000 women are expected to die from breast cancer. Moreover, an increase in U.K. cancer deaths is being traced back to Covid-19 related delays in diagnosis.
