They were told to get extra breast cancer screenings. Then they got stuck with the bill.
Increasing numbers of women are getting additional screenings to rule out breast cancer. But such screenings cost money, out of pocket, for most women.
When Molly Smith went for her first mammogram in 2021, she had reason to be wary. Her grandmother, mother, sister and another family member have all been diagnosed with breast cancer.
The mammogram detected abnormal tissue — said Smith, 46, a mother of two from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina — and more testing was necessary. To her great relief, Smith received a clean report following an ultrasound, MRI and biopsy. But she incurred bills of more than $1,000 that her insurance didn’t cover.
Smith is one of millions of American women who are at high risk for breast cancer but whose insurance does not cover the costs of follow-on screenings needed to detect the disease. Breast cancer can be hidden in mammograms for many women, so doctors recommend additional screenings, which include ultrasounds, MRIs and tomosynthesis, a kind of 3D mammogram.
Molly Smith.NBC News“With ultrasounds you find cancers that are not evident on mammograms,” said Dr. Madhavi Raghu, a radiation oncologist in western Connecticut. “If tomosynthesis is normal and the ultrasound is normal, the likelihood a patient has underlying cancer is quite low.”Women with dense breast tissue, a condition affecting roughly half of women over 40, are at special risk for breast cancer, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The condition makes it harder to spot cancer on a mammogram, so last year the FDA began requiring mammogram providers to notify women with dense breast tissue that they could need further evaluation and screenings to rule out cancer.
But such screenings cost money, out of pocket, for most women. While one mammogram per year is typically covered by private health insurance plans, they don’t generally reimburse fully for additional screenings.
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