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66 UCLA L. Rev. Discourse 1 (2018)

handle is hein.journals/ucladis66 and id is 1 raw text is: Insuring Breast Reconstruction Ann E. Tweedy ABSTRACT Women who are faced with a devastating diagnosis of breast cancer often confront a grueling treatment regimen, typically involving some combination of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Many of these women desire reconstruction and have a right to insurance coverage for it under the Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act (WHCRA). However, because of an unduly narrow interpretation of the Act, such women are often presented with a false dichotomy between a full mastectomy with reconstruction and a partial mastectomy or lumpectomy without. This Article uses legislative history, plain meaning, and state case law on similar issues to show that the WHCRA is properly interpreted as providing a right to insurance coverage for reconstruction after partial, as well as full, mastectomies. The author's experiences with breast cancer treatment are used to illustrate the problem. Additionally, the Article argues that the question of whether the WHCRA contains a private right of action separate from ERISA should be revisited. AUTHOR Adjunct Professor, University of Tulsa College of Law Online Masters ofJurisprudence Program; Tribal Attorney, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. Ann is a legal scholar specializing in tribal jurisdiction, tribal civil rights law, and gender, sexuality, and law. She is also a poet and author of The Body's Alphabet (2016), which was awarded a Bisexual Book Award and a Human Relations Indie Book Award and was named as a finalist for a Lambda LiteraryAward and a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. She is currently at work on a memoir entitled That Which Disdains to Destroy Us about her experience with breast cancer. I would like to thank Professors Bridget Crawford, Steve Macias, Elizabeth Pendo, and Jasmine Gonzales Rose for reviewing drafts of this Article. I am also grateful to the participants at LatCrit XXI for their extremely helpful comments, as well as to Professors Eric Eberhard and Mary Anne Case for helping me brainstorm during the early stages of the Article. Finally, thank you to the editors at UCLA Law Review for their keen eyes and helpful suggestions. The views expressed herein are my own and do not reflect those of the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe. 66 UCLA L. REV. 2 (2018)