Steve Zeamer is fighting to pass legislation that could save lives after losing his wife to breast cancer despite her diligent screening efforts.
Gail Zeamer died after an eight-year battle with breast cancer, but her husband Steve believes her death could have been prevented with better screening for women with dense breast tissue. Now he's working to pass "Gail's Law" in Wisconsin, which would require insurance companies to cover supplemental breast cancer screenings without co-pays for women with dense breasts.
"Gail was a person who cared about a lot of people," Steve said. "She kind of invested her whole life into helping others."
Gail worked as a speech therapist with the Birth to 3 program, helping infants and toddlers with feeding and speaking issues. She was a devoted mother to two daughters, now in their 20s.
Watch: Wisconsin man pushes for 'Gail's Law' after wife's death from breast cancer
The family's world changed on February 2, 2016, when Gail received her cancer diagnosis.
"It was like somebody dropped a nuclear bomb in the middle of our house because the shock waves went out from there," Steve said.
The diagnosis was particularly shocking because Gail had been diligent about screenings, scheduling mammograms every six months. She received a clear mammogram just one week before being diagnosed with stage 3C breast cancer.
Dense breast tissue appears white on mammograms, and cancer also shows up white, making it difficult to distinguish between the two.
"It's the old saying of the polar bear in a snowstorm, like you're looking for something that you can't see," Steve said.
"There's co-pays and deductibles that women have to meet, and so it has become a thing that it's cost-prohibitive," Steve said.
Gail began advocating for insurance coverage of supplemental screenings after Wisconsin passed a breast density notification law in 2018.
"She immediately turned around knowing that there was gonna be this piece of information, and I was like, OK, so you have this piece of information, and there's an expense involved now. How can we do this to women?" Steve said.
The bill would eliminate co-pays for supplemental breast cancer screenings like ultrasounds and MRIs for women with dense breast tissue and has already cleared the Senate 32-1.
"For a woman who gets a mammogram, she doesn't get a bill for it. It's covered 100%. Well, with a woman with dense breasts who needs that extra screening, this would do the same thing."
After Gail's death, Steve and his two daughters decided to continue her advocacy work.
"It's just the right thing to do," Steve said. "To know that there's a possibility that women, if they got the supplemental screenings and caught this early, that they wouldn't have to go through what our family has gone through and continues to go through."
Steve hopes passing Gail's Law will honor his wife's memory while preventing other families from experiencing similar losses.
"Our kids get to grow up without a mom now, and that's unfortunate," he said. "We owe this to mom to get this across the finish line because it's truly something that needs to be done."
This story was reported on-air by Charles Benson and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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