State to get breast cancer license plates

How to get yours

• The state is selling the first 18 breast cancer license plates through an online auction, www.32auctions.com/wabreastcancerplate The auction ends at 6 p.m. Friday.

• Beginning in January, the plates can be purchased for $60 through the state Department of Licensing.

• Proceeds from the license plate sales will benefit the Department of Health’s Breast, Cervical and Colon Health Program, which provides cancer screening for people without insurance. For more information on the program visit www.doh.wa.gov/bcchp

Vancouver resident Maureen Gatens Thompson had seen pink-tinged breast cancer awareness license plates on cars in other states, and she wanted to see similar pink-ribboned plates in Washington.

“I had already been a survivor once, diagnosed 28 years ago,” Gatens Thompson, 59, said. “And I just thought it was a really important thing to do.”

So she approached state Rep. Monica Stonier, who represents the 17th Legislative District, in which Gatens Thompson lives, and asked Stonier to make it happen.

This legislative session, she did just that.

“She wrote the bill and had bipartisan support, and it passed the legislature with no opposition,” Gatens Thompson said. “We all know that rarely happens.”

The plates have the same Mount Rainier background as the traditional plates, but the sky is tinted pink. The plates also feature a pink ribbon — the universal symbol for breast cancer awareness — and have “Early detection saves lives” written across the bottom.

Earlier this month, the first 18 breast cancer license plates were put up for sale through an online auction. They’ll be available for $60 through the state Department of Licensing beginning in January.

The money from the sale of the plates will benefit the state Department of Health’s Breast, Cervical and Colon Health Program, which provides cancer screenings for low-income Washington residents who are uninsured and underinsured.

For her role in making the plates a reality, Gatens Thompson will be given plate No. 19 — the first of the plates available after the auction.

In June — just a few months after Stonier’s bill was passed and signed by the governor — Gatens Thompson was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time. She had a partial mastectomy and is currently undergoing chemotherapy. In January, she’ll begin radiation.

Her cancer was discovered during a routine mammogram.

Cancer screening

The Breast, Cervical and Colon Health Program was established in 1998. The following year, PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center became the prime contractor administering the program’s services in Clark County.

In the past year, funding for the program has been cut as a result of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and insurance mandate that went into effect in January.

The majority of the program’s funding comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state and Susan G. Komen also contribute some money to the program. Next year, the state is eliminating its portion of the funding, said Kathleen Pyper, the program coordinator for Southwest Washington.

That’s because state officials believe the need for the program is eliminated by the Medicaid expansion and the requirement for everyone to have health insurance coverage.

“A lot of people in the state believed the ACA would eliminate health disparities, and it has not,” Pyper said.

The Southwest Washington region encompasses nine counties from Grays Harbor, Mason and Thurston counties to Clark and Skamania counties. Last grant year, the program budget for the region was about $1 million. This grant year, which began July 1, the budget is about $680,000, Pyper said.

While the Affordable Care Act has reduced the number of people who are uninsured, it hasn’t eliminated the uninsured population entirely, Pyper said.

Women who don’t qualify for the state Medicaid program still may not be able to afford to purchase an individual health plan, she said. In addition, illegal immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid or insurance subsidies and often go without health coverage, Pyper said.

“We do know the community is still out there,” she said. “The need is still there.”

The program typically enrolls about 1,600 to 1,800 women across the nine Southwest Washington counties in a year. In the grant year that ended June 30, the program enrolled about 1,100 women, many of whom had previously gone without cancer screenings, Pyper said. Out of about 900 women screened in the past 12 months, 32 women were diagnosed with cancer, she said.

“We’re catching cancer. We’re diagnosing cancer,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if the Affordable Care Act is here. There are still women out there without insurance, and they still have cancer.”

Gatens Thompson had never heard of the Breast, Cervical and Colon Health Program before working with Stonier on the license plate campaign. Making the program the license plate beneficiary was Stonier’s idea, Gatens Thompson said.

As a cancer survivor, Gatens Thompson was thrilled with the decision.

“The proceeds to me are probably the beauty of the whole thing Monica put together,” she said. “These are people who would not get the preventive care. … The preventive screening, that’s the icing on the cake.”