Front page article in the Wall Street Journal this week about the dirty little secret in the world of breast cancer...
LONGVIEW, Texas -- In June 2003, Shirley Loewe went to Good Shepherd Medical Center here with a softball-size lump in her breast and was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer. She didn't know it, but she had just made a big mistake.
Ms. Loewe was uninsured. Under federal law, she could have gotten Medicaid coverage -- and saved herself a lot of hardship -- if she'd gone to a different clinic less than a half-mile away. But by walking through Good Shepherd's doors, Ms. Loewe unwittingly let that opportunity slip and embarked on a four-year journey through the Byzantine U.S. health-care system.
It was an odyssey that would take her to five hospitals, two clinics, two charitable organizations and two nursing homes in two states. She was denied assistance or care at least six times along the way, for reasons that ranged from not being poor enough to not being sick enough.
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On a late June morning, Ms. Loewe lay in bed, emaciated and writhing in pain. Her left arm and hand were swollen to three times their size from lymphedema, a side effect of her breast surgery. Embarrassed by her appearance, she hid the huge black scar left on the top of her head by her brain surgery under a grey beret.
She reacted little when told that her ordeal could have been avoided had she gone to a different clinic back in 2003. "It's very complicated when you don't have health insurance," she whispered. "I really don't understand it much."
Ms. Loewe died on June 25 at age 55. Her daughter sold her car to pay for her cremation.
![](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/P1-AI985B_BCANC_20070912203241.gif)
Here in Ohio, a state that ranks 4th highest in the nation for breast cancer deaths per capita, Democratic candidate for governor, Ted Strickland agreed to fix Ohio's program and provide coverage for all uninsured low income women. After taking office and being heavily lobbied by those in the mammography business, he went back on his promise and agreed only to provide additional funding for mammography services, not treatment.
Link:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118781024289705455.html