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Clockwise from higher left: Katie Martin, Lexy Mealing, John Manna and Mary Catherine Johnson. They differ on politics, however all of them got here to Washington, D.C., to foyer Congress to help support for folks with the lethal illness.
Charlotte Kesl for KFF Health News
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Charlotte Kesl for KFF Health News
Mary Catherine Johnson is a retired small-business proprietor from exterior Rochester, New York. She voted for Donald Trump 3 times.
Lexy Mealing, who used to work in a doctor’s workplace, is from Long Island, New York. She’s a Democrat.
But the 2 ladies share a standard bond. They each survived breast most cancers.
And when the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network organized its annual citizen foyer day in Washington, D.C., final month, Johnson and Mealing had been among the many greater than 500 volunteers pushing Congress to maintain most cancers analysis and help for most cancers sufferers on the prime of the U.S. well being care agenda.
An annual plea
The day in Washington is one thing of a ritual for teams just like the most cancers group.
This yr it got here as Democrats and Republicans in Washington slid towards a funds deadlock that has shut down the federal authorities indefinitely. But these volunteers transcended their very own political variations and located widespread floor.
“Not one person here discussed if you’re a Democrat, if you’re a Republican,” says Mealing, one in every of 27 volunteers within the New York delegation. “Cancer doesn’t care.”
Every one of many volunteer lobbyists had been touched in a roundabout way by the lethal illness, which is predicted to kill more than 600,000 folks within the U.S. this yr.
Volunteers with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network from all 50 states adorned about 10,000 white paper luggage with messages of hope and remembrance for folks with most cancers.
Charlotte Kesl for KFF Health News
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Charlotte Kesl for KFF Health News
Johnson mentioned every of her mom’s 10 siblings died from most cancers, as did a lifelong buddy who died at age 57, abandoning his spouse and two younger daughters.
Like lots of the New York volunteers, Johnson additionally says she’s nervous concerning the state of politics at this time.
“I think we’re probably the most divided that we’ve ever been,” she says. “That scares me. Scares me for my grandchildren.”
Katie Martin, a volunteer from exterior Buffalo, N.Y., additionally worries. She and her daughter not too long ago drove previous political protesters screaming at each other on the road.
”My daughter is silent and then starts asking, ‘What is this?’ And I don’t know how to explain it, because it doesn’t even make sense to me,” she says. “It’s very heartbreaking.”
Mealing says she will barely watch the information nowadays. “A lot of Americans are very stressed out. There’s a lot of things going on.”
Bipartisan help
Americans are certainly cut up over many points: immigration, weapons, President Trump. But serving to folks with most cancers and different critical sicknesses retains broad bipartisan help, polls present.
In one recent survey, 7 in 10 voters mentioned it is essential for the federal authorities to fund medical analysis. That included majorities of Democrats and Republicans.
“It’s rare in today’s environment to see numbers like that,” says Jarrett Lewis, a Republican pollster who carried out the survey for affected person teams. “But almost everybody in this country knows somebody who’s had cancer.”
Similarly, a latest KFF poll discovered that three-quarters of U.S. adults, together with most Republicans who align with the MAGA motion, need Congress to increase subsidies that assist Americans purchase medical health insurance by way of Affordable Care Act marketplaces. (KFF is a well being info nonprofit that features KFF Health News.)
These subsidies, that are important to folks with persistent sicknesses similar to most cancers, are one of many essential sticking factors within the present funds deadlock in Congress.
As the volunteers gathered in a convention resort in Washington, they targeted on their shared agenda: rising funding for most cancers analysis, retaining insurance coverage subsidies and increasing entry to most cancers screening.
“We may not see eye to eye politically. We might not even see eye to eye in social circumstances,” mentioned Martin, the Buffalo-area volunteer. “But we can see beyond those differences because we’re here for one cause.”
The state delegations practiced the pitches they’d make to their members of Congress. They ran by way of the private tales they’d share. And they swapped ideas for the way to take care of resistant workers and the way to ask for a photograph with a lawmaker.
On the morning of their foyer day, Sept. 16, they reconvened in a cavernous ballroom, all decked out in matching blue polo shirts and armed with crimson info folders to go away at every workplace they’d go to.
They received a pep speak from a pair of school basketball coaches. Then they headed throughout city to Capitol Hill.
The military of volunteers — from each state within the nation — hit 484 of the 535 Senate and House places of work.
Not each go to was an unqualified victory. Many Republican lawmakers object to extending the insurance coverage subsidies, arguing they’re too expensive.
But lawmakers from each events have backed elevated analysis funding and help for extra most cancers screening.
And the New Yorkers felt good concerning the day. “It was amazing,” Mealing mentioned because the day wrapped up. “You could just feel the sense of, ‘Everybody stronger together.'”
Memorials and classes
When night got here, the volunteers met on the National Mall for a candlelight vigil. It was raining. Bagpipes performed.
Around a pond close to the Lincoln Memorial, some 10,000 tea lights glimmered in little paper luggage. Each luminary had a reputation on it — a life touched by most cancers.
John Manna, one other New Yorker, is a self-described Reagan Republican whose father died from lung most cancers. He mirrored on classes that at the present time might provide a divided nation.
An illuminated signal says “HOPE” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., a part of an annual occasion organized by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network to convey the wants of most cancers sufferers to the eye of lawmakers. A gradual rain fell on this yr’s night vigil.
Charlotte Kesl for KFF Health News
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Charlotte Kesl for KFF Health News
“Talk to people,” he mentioned. “Get to know each other as people, and then you can understand somebody’s positions. We have little disagreements, but, you know, we don’t attack each other. We talk and discuss it.”
Manna mentioned he could be again subsequent yr.
KFF Health News is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points.
This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its unique location you may go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/10/21/nx-s1-5576978/cancer-lobby-politics-patients-american-cancer-society-cancer-action-network
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