Dec. 16--SACRAMENTO -- Advocates of breast cancer prevention on Tuesday assailed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for his administration's decision to radically curtail a program that currently provides mammograms for low-income women over 40.
"We are appalled that Every Woman Counts is closing its doors to uninsured women," said Donna Sanderson, Sacramento director for the international advocacy group Susan G. Komen for the Cure. "We know that screening saves lives."
The state Department of Public Health announced last month that, effective Jan. 1, it will cease to provide screenings to women under 50 and that women over 50 will have to wait until July to be screened next year.
The program, called Every Woman Counts, served more than 300,000 women last fiscal year, a level of demand that necessitated augmented state funding from the Legislature. Public health officials estimate that nearly 260,000 women will have been screened in just the first six months of this fiscal year.
The program serves a limited population: women with too much income to qualify for Medi-Cal, have no private health insurance and have incomes between 100 percent and 200 percent of the poverty level ($10,830 to $21,610 for a single woman and $14,570 to $29,640 for a family of two).
"It's a very difficult decision that makes no one happy," said department spokesman Al Lundeen. "Demand for the service is up, and the revenue is down."
The advocates were assembled at a Capitol news conference with Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, and Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, chairwoman of the Assembly Budget Committee.
The legislators complained the administration's action was surprising and hasty. "This directive was issued with absurdly short notice and with no public oversight," Nava said.
Administration officials countered, however, that the proposal to limit screening to women over 50 was disclosed in a budget letter to the Legislature in May. It was further discussed in a June meeting of the Budget Conference Committee, of which Evans is a member. She voted for a measure to provide augmented funds for the program and was informed of proposed changes to reduce costs by imposing new age limits.
Told of that discussion, Nava said his basic criticism still stands. "Five minutes of discussion at a hearing in Sacramento is not the kind of public outreach you need when you're implementing a program change that puts women's lives at risk," he said.
The program is funded by a portion of state tobacco taxes and federal grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over the years, the amount of federal money has declined substantially, tobacco tax revenues have flattened and demand has climbed steadily.
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