Like many states, California is facing a massive budget shortfall, to the tune of about $20 billion. To offset the massive debt, the state has had to make serious cuts to public services such as raising university tuition by more than 30 percent, extending furlough days for state employees, even closing courts once a month to save money.
Relative to those far-reaching changes, a $10 million cut to Every Woman Counts, a cancer-screening program for low-income women, should have been a minor item on the list of public services being scaled back. For seven years, the program has provided free mammograms and cervical-cancer screenings to women earning less than $21,660 a year. In the face of tighter budgets, the California Department for Public Health decided in early December to shrink the program by raising the minimum age for free mammograms from 40 to 50.
The change may save the state a few million dollars, but it has also bought a giant political headache. Because just 21 days before California changed the Every Woman Counts age requirements the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force caused widespread outrage by making the same policy recommendation: that the minimum age for mammograms should be raised 10 years to 50.