WASHINGTON (Gray DC) – Legislation focusing on breast cancer patients and survivors was highlighted on Capitol Hill throughout October. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is over now, but advocates and lawmakers hope the momentum will continue throughout the rest of the year.

Two key issues are being addressed: insurance coverage for additional imaging and reconstructive work for breast cancer patients.

Leslie Ferris Yerger’s breast cancer journey didn’t start with a suspicious lump or an unusual mammogram. It started with a bone density scan and a doctor catching the red flags too late.

“Breast cancer had been hiding in my dense breast tissue for maybe a decade,” Yerger said.

Yerger is one of millions of women with dense breast tissue, a natural occurrence that makes it near impossible to find suspicious spots with typical imaging.

“I got a PET CT scan, a nuclear medicine PET CT scan. And that was the first imaging modality that had every actually revealed that breast cancer,” she said.

Now, she’s an advocate for additional screenings, including molecular breast imaging. Two Senate bills are aimed at making it easier for women to get diagnosed without the barrier of cost.

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) is highlighting a different stage of the breast cancer journey: recovery and what it means for survivors to feel whole again.

“After a woman is fighting cancer, she shouldn’t have to fight her insurance company, too,” Cammack said.

The “Advancing Women’s Health Coverage Act” brings a nearly 30-year-old law into the 21st century, a move Cammack said is long overdue.

“In order to reconstruct, to basically rebuild their bodies after having survived breast cancer, this bill makes it so insurance companies are not the arbiter of what kind of treatment they receive,” she said.

“We’ve been looking for ways that we can address these massive gaps in women’s healthcare that have been really talked about, but no one’s taken action on,” Cammack said.

For Yerger, every step forward on or off the Hill is a move in the right direction, but a journey she feels is far from over.

“We’re kind of in the middle of it now, but we have not crossed the finish line,” she said.

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