Higher Breast Cancer Death Rates for Low-Income Women Illustrate Need for Universal Health Care, Op-Ed States

While the recent finding by the National Cancer Institute that poor women have higher death rates from breast cancer than wealthier women is "not surprising," it "adds more evidence to the argument for universal health care," syndicated columnist Deborah Mathis writes in a USA Today opinion piece. The finding "follows the logic of poverty" -- poverty is a "functional state whose job it is to deprive, to create and to maintain have-nots," Mathis says. She adds that poor women cannot afford to regularly visit the doctor and thus are less likely than wealthier women to have cancer diagnosed in its earliest stages. Although the public might have already assumed such a situation occurs, the study's finding still is "useful" because it "quantifies" racial health disparities and "makes another indictment of our health care system," Mathis writes. In addition, she surmises that the report adds credence to the idea that "keeping its people alive is a nation's first calling, trumping every other protection the federal government has to offer. The dead don't need a Bill of Rights." Mathis, however, raises concern about the study's main conclusion that poverty, rather than race, is the main "culprit" in disparate mortality rates, adding that the report "fails to recognize, or at least acknowledge, the inextricable link between race and poverty" (Mathis, USA Today, 4/5).