The Hartford Courant’s longtime Capitol bureau chief, Christopher Keating, reports:
Democrat Susan Bysiewicz has released her first television commercial of the 2012 primary campaign for the U.S. Senate, touting her work to help cancer survivors.
A former state legislator from Middletown, Bysiewicz focuses on her record as a co-sponsor of a bill in 1997 to prevent drive-through mastectomies. Before the bill was signed into law by then-Gov. John G. Rowland, some women were rushed through the hospital and discharged quickly after a mastectomy.
The commercial opens up with Maureen Hogan Lutz looking at the camera and talking about her experience. A Ridgefield Democrat, Lutz is a breast cancer activist and author who wrote a book, “Diamonds In The Snow: Rescuing the Senses in the Aftermath of Breast Cancer.”
Lutz talks for virtually the entire 30-second commercial, except for Bysiewicz’s statement at the end in which she says she approved the message.
“Seven years ago, a mastectomy helped me defeat breast cancer,” Lutz says as she looks into the camera. “Women used to be sent home right after a mastectomy because insurance refused to cover their hospital stay. Susan Bysiewicz got a law passed that made insurance cover my time in the hospital. I’ll be proud to vote for Susan Bysiewicz. She fought the insurance companies to make sure we get the care we deserve.”
The measure was pushed heavily at the time by a well-known surgeon, Dr. Kristen Zarfos of Middletown, the same hometown as Bysiewicz. They were involved in the issue before the 1997 legislative session started, making appearances on the matter, including at the Program Review and Investigations committee. Legislators had been clashing at that time over the managed care industry at a time of harsh criticism for health maintenance organizations. In January 1997, the Democrats took control of the state Senate after two years of Republican control – and they have held the Senate ever since.
Bysiewicz served in the state legislature for six years before serving for 12 years as the Secretary of the State. She ran unsuccessfully for governor and attorney general before her current race for U.S. Senate.
Bysiewicz is running against U.S. Rep. Christopher Murphy, who won the Democratic Party’s endorsement at the convention and has opened a 30-point lead in the latest Quinnipiac University poll. The poll, which was released three weeks ago, had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
Bysiewicz and Murphy will be debating on Sunday, July 22, at the Klein Memorial Auditorium in Bridgeport in a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters, Hearst newspapers, and Cablevision.
Susan Bysiewicz – “Proud” from Susan’s Plan on Vimeo.
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11 Responses to Democrat Susan Bysiewicz Releases Her First Television Ad
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SB334/ PA 97-198 passed both houses unanimously, and was introduced by the insurance committee, on which it appears Susan did not sit. She must have been highly influential if it is true that “Susan Bysiewicz got a law passed that made insurance cover my time in the hospital.”
Below is a nice briefing on same day ambulatory surgery and Europe and the tremendous benefit it ahs for cost containment.
Scheduling minor surgeries for ambulatory care centers is an important part of National Health cost control.
Hopefully CT will find the backbone to stand down special interest groups and their incessant demands for pampering and handholding at the expense of the expense of the rest of society.
http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/108965/E90295.pdf
Richard – Mastectomy is not a simple, minor procedure. Healthcare dollars are being saved by using ambulatory surgery when appropriate. You have a lot of nerve calling women with breast cancer a “special interest group” with “incessant demands for pampering and handholding at the expense of the rest of society”. That has to be the most cruel and misogynist statement I’ve heard in years. I don’t like this candidate. I read the article only to see how she justifies this particular claim. Then, I came upon your comment. Hopefully if you ever need a cancerous body part removed, someone will be sure to save the expense of pampering you and pushes you out the door as soon as you come out of anesthesia.
When will Susan Bysiewicz go away?
Only when she makes a complete fool of herself. Poor Murphy having to deal with Bysiewicz the Twit.
This is a nice story but what has it got to do with being a senator. I hope that she and Murphy will realize that they should be running against McMahon and her simple-minded solutions like cutting the 25% tax bracket to 15% to save the average taxpayer $6,000 per year. Do the math and you will see that a taxable income of $130,000 will save that amount while actual middle class people will get little to nothing. Cut spending by 1% a year until the budget is balanced? Which 1% will she cut and has she figured how many decades that will take to actually accomplish? Susan and Chris – run against McMahon not each other and whichever one of you appears to democrats and independents as the most credible to beat her will win the nomination.
Nice ad, but you should use someone who can pronounce the word mastectomy correctly, NOT masectomy. As a retired nurse, it really turns me off. I won’t be voting for someone who doesn’t know the word in their ad is not pronounced correctly!!!!
Dr Zarfos is the one who deserves credit for the changes in insurance coverage. See Hartford Courant article dated Feb. 12, 1997…. Just what did Susan do?
Mastectomies are not simple outpatient procedures and hospital stay is necessary. However, the credit should go to Dr. Kristen Zarfos and Congrsswoman Rosa DeLauro, not Bysewicz. Is she trying to rewrite history to suit her political ambitions?
While the subject is an important one and worth of advertisements, both of these Bysiewicz ads are an embarrassment to her campaign. BOTH women mispronounce “mastectomy” for a total of 3 times in the 2 ads. Even if THEY don’t know how to pronounce the word, did NO ONE — producer, editor, writer — along the way catch it? This is not a difficult word and it really doesn’t inspire confidence in a candidate when she, especially, can even get it right.
Maureen Hogan Lutz is a “breast cancer advocate” & she wrote a book about it but she still can’t pronounce the word “Mastectomy”??? Susan Bysiewicz claims she helped pass the law against drive-through mastectomies but in her ad she can’t pronounce the word either! It is “Mastectomy”, NOT “Masectomy”! I am a retired nurse & I have had a mastectomy(9 yrs. ago)! These ads are an insult to their intelligence on the matter when they are supposed to be advocates but can’t even pronounce the word! Did they think people wouldn’t notice? Wrong!