Help make colonoscopies more affordable as an effective screening tool
Patient advocacy is something I care about and spend time actively supporting two worthwhile causes, including the lovely folks at Fight Colorectal Cancer, headed by the indefatigueable Carlea Bauman and Nancy Roach. As someone who has lost several family members to colon or rectal cancer, this is something dear to my heart. I got involved largely through being inspired by the incredible Kate Murphy, who sadly passed away last summer.
Today, Fight CRC is spearheading a campaign to improve access to colonoscopies, a valuable scrrening tool to pick up the disease early. By some odd Medicare quirk, as far as I’m aware, there’s no co-pay for colonoscopies unless a polyp is picked up and removed. Obviously, it’s more straightforward to remove the polyp then and there rather than go through the prep and procedure again, but that incurs a co-pay… which in turn provides a barrier to more people being screened. Removing the co-pay would make colonoscopies more affordable for millions of people. We all know that prevention is better than cure.
You can do a number of things to help and join the fight!
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Follow the campaign efforts on Twitter using the hashtag #conc2013
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Donate to the Fight Colorectal Cancer cause
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Call the number below to be put through to your representative to urge them to co-sponsor HR 1070, which has a worthy aim:
“To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to waive coinsurance under Medicare for colorectal cancer screening tests, regardless of whether therapeutic intervention is required during the screening.”
The more co-sponsors on the bill… the greater the chance of its enactment, another barrier to screening is removed and more saving of lives from colorectal cancer.
One Response to “Help make colonoscopies more affordable as an effective screening tool”
I am completely behind this. My uncle passed of cancer that would have been easily prevented if he had the money to get checked out. Instead he figured “feeling bad isn’t worth me spending $100 to find out what’s wrong.”
If preventative checkups were cheaper, more accessible to lower class folks, it could save a LOT of lives.
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