Politics & Government

Corzine Meets With Breast Cancer Survivors

Governor marks National Mammography Day.

 

In the final days of a hotly-contested governor's race in which health care has become a major issue, Gov. Jon Corzine marked National Mammography Day with breast cancer survivors and leaders from the local Susan G. Komen North Jersey Affiliate in Summit Friday morning.

With a cup of black coffee in one hand, the governor sat and listened as a dozen breast cancer survivors told him what the state needs to be doing better with mandated screenings, research and funding.

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Freeholder Amy Malett, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 19, said she appreciates the governor's efforts to mandate mammograms for women in the state, but would like to see it go further to include MRIs and sonograms, which often supplement detection.

Barbara Waters, with Susan G. Komen, said mammograms do not work on younger women because their breasts are too dense.

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"I'm proud of where we are," Corzine said, but added the state needs to do more.

Marybeth Maida, author of the book "Beauty Pearls for Chemo Girls," said the state needs to close the disparity with the under-insured and uninsured.

"We gotta get preventive care insured," Corzine said. "Preventive care saves money. And the payback to society is enormous. ... It's not right morally to not have preventive care and it's crazy financially."

Others called for a redefining of how an "at-risk" woman is defined. The majority of the survivors at the event had no family history of breast cancer and therefore would not have been considered at-risk for the cancer. Others were still not considered to be at-risk by their doctors after already being diagnosed with breast cancer once or twice before.

Corzine has accused his GOP opponent, Chris Christie, of opposing mandatory mammograms. Christie has denied the accusation.

"We cannot allow the clocks to be turned back to a time" when this wasn't mandated, Mallet said.

Waters, a 22-year cancer survivor, agreed.

"I felt ashamed, if you can believe it, that I had breast cancer," she said.

In addition to preventive screenings, the women asked Corzine to put more funding into research behind the causes of breast cancer.

There are 200,000 new breast cancer diagnoses in the United State every year, Waters said. The death rate is still 40,000 annually.

"Something has to change," she said.

"The reason we have to have national healthcare reform is because there has to be some baseline of attention," Corzine said. "And they haven't mandated the kinds of things we're talking about. It sounds to me like some of these are actually missing here in Jersey."

Corzine said he wants to sit down again with the women and come up with an action plan to move forward.

"He's very true to the cause," said Deb Belfatto, executive director of Susan G. Komen North Jersey Affiliate.


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