36 months to live, 29 months to wait. Why is Congress withholding lifesaving benefits from breast cancer patients?

In this episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, and Jacquelyn Cobb, managing editor of The Cancer Letter, discuss the Metastatic Breast Cancer Act, bipartisan legislation that would eliminate the waiting periods for Social Security Disability Insurance and Medicare for eligible people with metastatic breast cancer. “We realized a number of years ago that women and men with metastatic breast cancer can have access to Social Security Disability and Medicare, regardless of age, that they automatically qualify. It's a qualifying condition under SSDI. We also realized that there is a wait time. There is a four month wait for Social Security Disability and then 24 month wait for Medicare. And this is in a population that has an average lifespan of about 36 months. So it made no sense to us, and I don't think I've spoken to anyone who told me it made sense to them, even on Capitol Hill,” Visco said. Visco describes the real-life consequences of the waiting period, which includes patients with metastatic disease who continue to work despite being too sick to do so because they need employer-sponsored insurance to access lifesaving treatment. “So why? We can't answer that question. We don't know why that happened. But the question we're asking now is why do they have to wait? This is ridiculous. We're not asking to expand an entitlement program or anything like that. They have paid for this benefit. They're entitled to it, and yet it's being withheld from them for some unknown reason, probably cost, and that is not a sufficient reason to deny a paid-for benefit to a dying group of people.”Visco said the legislation has attracted 268 bipartisan House cosponsors and support from about two-thirds of the Ways and Means Committee, but has yet to receive a markup.  “I can't understand how this country would allow it to happen, that women and men who are going through this, and who qualify for care, are not getting it,” said Visco. “Maybe we should call it a war and do something to get their attention because they seem to be able to fund wars quite well. So, how about funding something that can save lives?”This episode is sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Learn more at https://quality.asco.org/Stories mentioned in this podcast include:Scientific progress can’t help people if they can’t access careNBCC’s open letter to Ways and Means demands markup for Metastatic Breast Cancer Access to Care ActA transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20260923-ssdi/