Breast Cancer Hospitalization Bill

Lifetime Television is sponsoring a petition urging Congress to ban "drive-through" mastectomies — the practice in which women are forced out of the hospital sometimes only hours after breast cancer surgery.

The legislation would require insurance companies to cover a 48-hour minimum stay for mastectomy patients and a 24-hour stay for a woman undergoing a lymph node dissection. The legislation ensures that a doctor and a patient will make a decision together about staying at a hospital after a mastectomy.

While both the American College of Surgeons and the American Medical Association believe that most patients require a longer hospital stay, "drive-through" mastectomies have become an unwelcome reality for women who are battling breast cancer. Against the advice of their doctors, women must leave the hospital while still in pain, groggy with anesthesia and with drainage tubes still in place.

Please take a moment to click and sign this petition, helping to pass legislation which will end this practice.