Apparently equal opportunity works both ways when it comes to sex discrimination. Although women are the most often discriminated against in the real world of politics, the job market and a myriad of other places (not the least of which is a car repair shop), it seems men are discriminated against in one key area.
Women are the sex most often diagnosed with breast cancer. It is a well known fact that this is primarily a disease that affects women. However, unlike prostate cancer which is gender specific to men only, breast cancer can affect men as well as women.
Makes sense, because men do have breast tissue, just like women, it’s just that they have much less of it and they have much less of the hormone that often triggers and can prolong breast cancer, estrogen (or certain types of estrogen).
A man in South Carolina recently was diagnosed with breast cancer. He’s young too, only in his mid twenties. I’m sure the last thing on his mind when he went to the hospital for chest pain was that he had breast cancer. But it turns out that is what he had.
The hospital who diagnosed him encourages him to seek help from the federal Medicaid program, which helps people who are in lower income classes as well as citizens who are disabled. This way, he could get treatment that he otherwise could not afford covered, or at least mostly covered.
It is outrageously expensive to treat any type of cancer, and it can be devastating financially to even the most well off of us. People like this man need it even more, especially in this economy, when something goes sour with their health.
Well folks, even with the outrageous taxes we pay to support programs like this, this poor guy was denied coverage under Medicaid because he was a man, and the way the silly law is written (or whatever you call what governs the rules by which Medicaid operates), only women qualify for treatment for breast cancer under the federally funded program.
This is a ridiculous interpretation of the law, and regulators are trying to talk to officials about it right now to get this sort of ambiguous law overturned. After all, men are really getting breast cancer more now.
Chock it up to more hormones in our meats and foods and dairy products, or the plastics that we come in contact with that act as replicated estrogens in our body. Chock it up to whatever you like – it seems like male breast cancer is something we may be seeing more and more of.
