Agency says budget cuts to program may cost women’s lives
A $400,000 state budget hit could result in closure of one or more LSU-affiliated breast and cervical cancer screening sites serving uninsured women, the director of the program said Wednesday.
The program operates 10 sites around the state, including two each in Baton Rouge and Lafayette.
“If we close them, we are going to lose the services that direct women from an abnormal screen to treatment and fast-track Medicaid (coverage),” said Dr. Donna Williams, an assistant professor at the LSU School of Public Health and director of the program.
Medicaid is the government’s health insurance program.
It is a prospect that cancer patient Laura Lott, of Baton Rouge, has trouble even thinking about, given what the program has meant to her from an initial diagnosis in her late 20s through recurrences.
“I’d probably be dead. They listened to me. They really worked for me,” said Lott, now a 35-year-old who recently had a mastectomy and is undergoing chemotherapy.
The funding problem emanates from LSU health-care budget cuts in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. As of July 1, those cuts will be annualized, meaning a $100,000 reduction in state funds, Williams said. Those funds are used to attract another nearly $300,000 in federal dollars, she said.
The Louisiana Breast and Cervical Health Program operates on $2.4 million annually, of which $700,000 are state funds. The program currently provides cancer screening for approximately 14,000 women annually.
The funding cut translates into 3,000 fewer women each year having mammographies and cervical cancer screenings, said Andrew Muhl, government relations director of the Louisiana Chapter of the American Cancer Society.
As a result, Muhl said, cancer diagnoses will occur at a later stage, “which is more likely to lead to death in a state that already ranks second in breast-cancer mortality.”
Williams said the program has been “an extremely important resource” for women who, because they have no insurance, have not been able to access care.
Lott was one of those women.
“I found a lump. I did not know what it was. I was 26 at the time, and didn’t have insurance,” she said. “That was the first time they found the cancer.”
She said the company she worked for did not offer health insurance. Now, she said, she cannot afford the insurance.
When the program started in 2002, more late-stage cancer was being seen, Williams said. “As we go through time, we have seen more early-stage cancer and that translates into more people living. It would be a shame to lose that kind of program,” she said.
“We have begun to see the mortality rate in Louisiana declining,” Williams said.
Apart from the six sites in Baton Rouge, Lafayette and New Orleans, the other four are in Shreveport, Monroe, Houma and Independence.
Since its inception, 47,406 women have received services through the program.
There have been 74,398 mammograms performed, resulting in 692 cases of breast cancer being diagnosed — 129 cases in the past year alone.
Absent the funding, there will be two choices: close one or two sites or spread the cuts across the 10 sites, Williams said.
“We’ll have to discuss whether it makes more sense to close a couple of sites because cutting all back would end up being so small it would not be worth funding them anyway,” Williams said.