Read the complete article here.

A drop in donations to its biggest fundraiser of the year is creating a crisis for Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s Southern Arizona chapter, its executive director said this week.

With the event less than two weeks away, registration this week totaled 4,200, far less than the event’s target of 11,000.

The event has a fundraising goal of $700,000 and so far has pulled in $200,000, said Jaimie Leopold, executive director of Komen Southern Arizona, which gives grants to local groups for breast cancer treatment, awareness, research and prevention. Last year’s race raised $660,000. The race is the organization’s biggest fundraiser of the year.

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Part of the reason for flagging participation may be that this year’s event is earlier than in the past and people aren’t aware the race date is coming up. The event is usually held in April. Also, the recession has affected donations to charities nationwide.

But Leopold confirmed another reason for the drop is a recent spate of publicity over a national split between Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen Foundation that created lingering mistrust, even though the relationship between the two organizations was later restored.

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“We wanted the face of the race to be courage and survivorship,” Leopold said. “We are still looking at the data, but we seem to be getting a higher volume of younger women in trouble.”

Thirty-four-year-old Mareya Bullard is living the kind of nightmare that has become part of the rallying cry for health-care reform in the United States. The Tucson resident was diagnosed with advanced Stage 3 breast cancer almost exactly a year ago, when she was 33 and had no health insurance, having recently lost her job when the northwest-side cafe she was managing closed down.

She endured 27 sessions of chemotherapy, underwent a double mastectomy in December, and is currently getting radiation treatment.

But her health problems were only part of the battle she’s fighting. Bullard was able to secure some help through a six-month temporary coverage plan through Arizona’s Medicaid program. The program, often referred to as “spend down,” gives temporary health-insurance assistance to people with medical expenses that deplete their incomes to a level that makes them Medicaid-eligible. But when that six-month plan ended, she was unable to get any other government assistance.

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There are problems here that may be much bigger than what Komen can help with. It’s sad that they can’t help as many people as they could before, but I’m not sorry that their perfidy had consequences. I couldn’t find a statement on Komen’s position on Obama’s health care plan. I did find a statement that they want to reduce healthcare disparities. If they are not lobbying to turn this around [the next paragraph from the article]:

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Though she had no income, she couldn’t enroll in regular Medicaid, which is for Arizona’s most indigent residents, because she was single and childless. As part of budget slashing, Arizona’s Medicaid program as of July stopped covering single, childless adults [emphasis added]- a move that has prompted outrage by some, including a lawsuit because it reversed coverage terms that had been set by voters in 2000. But the state’s decision on cutting childless adults was upheld by the courts. The state also incidentally cut the program that gave Bullard six months of help. [emphasis added]

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…then they are still missing the boat.

By the way, Arizona: You suck.