No Health Insurance? Breast Cancer Screening on a Budget

What do you do when you’ve lost your job, you have no health insurance, and you find a lump in your breast?

Or you have a job but have no insurance, and make too much money to qualify for Medicaid?

Or… name your own financial/healthcare nightmare here. Including “I had a great job, I lost it, and now I have no health insurance, no income, and no assets.”

Bottom line, you’re making tough choices every day about allocation of your limited resources. Do you pay rent and buy groceries; or put gas in the car (or pay the babysitter) so you can work; or get that aching tooth looked at… the challenges are endless when money is short.

Feeling a lump in your breast is the last thing you want to deal with.

And the first thing you should.

When you discover a change in your breast, it’s tempting to ignore it. But a lump, swelling in your armpit, overall redness and pain, or any situation that appears suddenly and doesn’t go away within a few weeks (or worsens steadily) should be seen by a doctor. Only a doctor—not your mom, your girlfriend, your partner, or this Web site—can tell you what’s happening in your breast. And whether it’s serious… perhaps serious enough to kill you.

So what’s a low-income/uninsured woman to do?

Put your tax dollars to work, that’s what. Access government help, which does in fact exist for women in your situation facing possible breast cancer.

Your very first step is to visit or call your local hospital’s social services department. Once you reach social services, explain your situation. And ask about the Federal Center for Disease Control’s National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP), which “provides low-income, uninsured, and underserved women access to timely breast and cervical cancer screening and diagnostic services.”

The NBCCEDP provides the following breast-related services to underserved women between the ages of 40-64:

•Clinical breast examinations;

•Mammograms;

•Diagnostic testing if results are abnormal;

•Referrals to treatment.

In addition, if you’re diagnosed with breast cancer you can get financial help for treatment via the government’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act, which allows women who ordinarily wouldn’t qualify for Medicaid access to those funds for breast cancer treatment. 

But here’s a critical caveat: in order to qualify for this special Medicaid, you have to have been diagnosed through the NBCCEDP, described above. So you don’t want to make any wrong moves around who you see about that lump, or when you see them.