Check With Your Insurance Company Before Breast Reconstruction

Thanks to the Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act (WHCRA), passed in 1998, your insurance provider is required to cover breast reconstruction surgery if it also covered the cost of your mastectomy. Breast prostheses will also be covered, as may surgery to the unaffected breast to help make both breasts more symmetrical. But a delay in the decision to have breast reconstruction might absolve your insurance company of this obligation. To make sure that all options will still be available to you and covered by your insurance, find out just what your insurance company's policies are, and factor this into your decisions about breast reconstruction.