Katie Couric's Notebook: Colon Cancer
Video: This year, nearly 155,000 Americans will be diagnosed with colon cancer...about 52,000 will die.
Many of these lives could be spared if more of us got screened.
March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and this week we've been looking at how to prevent, detect, and SURVIVE the disease.
A colonoscopy can literally nip cancer in the bud. Yet, while those 50 and over should get screened, only half do.
One reason is it's financially out of reach for many. Just 19 states require insurance companies cover screening colonoscopies...Virginia does because my sister sponsored a bill as a state senator after my husband Jay died in 1998.
47 states require coverage for mammograms. Why not insist the same for colonoscopies?
It may not be at the top of your "to do" list, but no one should die of embarrassment or neglect. If you don't get screened for yourself, do it for the people who love you.
That's a page from my notebook.