Should Medicaid cover male breast cancer? - Healthy Living - The ...

Should Medicaid cover male breast cancer?

August 9th, 2011, 6:00 am ? 14 Comments ? posted by Landon Hall

Photo posted to Flickr by Margi Levin.

If you?re a guy and you?re unlucky enough to be one of the few men diagnosed with breast cancer, you?ll probably be better off in California than in South Carolina.

Raymond Johnson, a 26-year-old construction worker from Cross, S.C., went to the ER July 4 weekend complaining of a terrible pain in his chest. Doctors found a baseball-sized tumor, making him one of about 2,000 U.S. men each year to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Women are diagnosed a little less than 100 times more often.

(More on male breast cancer, including symptoms, from the American Cancer Society.)

Johnson isn?t insured and can?t afford treatments, so he was encouraged to apply for a Medicaid program that covers screenings and treatment for breast and cervical cancer. The program was established by a 2000 federal law called the Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act. Johnson met all the required guidelines, except for the one stating he must be a woman to qualify.

?Cancer doesn?t discriminate, so this program shouldn?t discriminate,? Johnson told the Post and Courier of Charleston. Even the state?s Medicaid agency is calling for a change to federal policy.

California came up with a workaround to this oversight back in 2001 with the passage of Assembly Bill 430, which created the state Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Program and went beyond the federal law. The bill specifically allows coverage of men for treatment and women over age 65 (who might be excluded by the federal law) even if they don?t qualify for Medi-Cal.

What do you think? Is the issue of male breast cancer getting enough attention?

More on breast cancer:

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Source: http://healthyliving.ocregister.com/2011/08/09/should-medicaid-cover-male-breast-cancer/36687/

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