Long term healthcare is something that everyone with breast cancer must consider. Breast cancer is not something that you get, treat, and then forget about. Most of the time your doctors will want to continue to see you and run tests every once in awhile to make sure that the cancer does not come back. While breast cancer is highly treatable, it also requires that one takes care of themselves with the help of qualified doctors.
Of course, long term healthcare is easier said than done. For those that have great health insurance before breast cancer, they really do have it pretty good. The problem is that breast cancer is something that many insurance companies don't want anything to do with, because it is expensive to treat. What this means is that it can be hard to build long term healthcare if you have to switch health insurance companies after being diagnosed with breast cancer, even if you are in remission. If you have health insurance when you are diagnosed, it is a good idea to try to stick with the same insurance through treatment and at least a year after you go into remission.
It is a lot easier to maintain true long term healthcare when you stick with the same insurance because they want you to beat the cancer and they want it to stay gone. What your insurance company will do is require that you have check ups every so often for a couple years after you have been given a clean bill of health. While this seems like nothing more than an inconvenience, this is cheaper for your insurance company than having you diagnosed with breast cancer again later on down the road. This also ensures that if you are going to have a reoccurrence of breast cancer that it will be caught earlier so that treatment will likely be easier.
When you switch health insurance, it can be difficult to get real long term health care that is affordable because your cancer can be considered a pre-existing condition. It doesn't seem like you should be penalized for having cancer, but when you look at the situation from the insurance company's point of view, you'll see that you are a risk to them. This is why it is a good idea to stick with the same insurance company if at all possible, because they have paid for your bills one time over, and they want to prevent doing it again, so they will provide you with the best preventative care for years afterward.
Long term health care or disability insurance is something that everyone should look into, as well. This type of insurance is typically offered through employers and will allow you to have health care provided to you and still be able to pay bills should you be diagnosed with cancer or another debilitating disease that doesn't allow you to continue to work to provide for your family. Long term health care or disability insurance allows many people to be treated, recover, and get back to work without going broke because the disability insurance will pay you a portion of your salary until you are able to get back to work. This type of long term health care will also allow you to focus on getting well, instead of stressing about how quickly you are going broke.
Breast cancer, along with all cancers, is not something that any of us assumes that we will get. What we can do is plan ahead for such diagnoses, and be sure that we have quality health insurance and a long term healthcare plan in place. Recovery is much easier when we know that our health and our bills will be taken care of until we are back on our feet again.