Imagine there were a simple test, using AI, that could accurately predict a man's chance of developing prostate cancer in the next five years.

Would insurance pay the $249 for the test?

You bet they would. "Men fund what they fear," then Rep. Pat Schroeder so famously observed when fighting for increased funding for breast cancer research.

There is now such a test for breast cancer. And insurance is not covering it.

Starting this week, Everlywell, a digital health company, announced it would offer patients across the country access to something called Clairity Breast, an AI tool that examines a single recent mammogram and, from that scan, predicts the risk of a woman developing breast cancer in the next five years. Clairity provides a probability score that predicts the patient's risk from 0% to 100%, allowing patients and their doctors to take preventive measures to detect and treat cancers earlier, when they are more treatable and more likely to have better outcomes.

Consider the case of Karen Hale, detailed in The New York Times. "I'd never had a scare, never had any red flags," said Ms. Hale, a co-chair on the board of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which provided seed money to Clairity Inc. Though her mother had breast cancer, Ms. Hale's genetic testing did not identify any known mutations associated with breast cancer risk. But the Clairity test identified her as high risk, leading her doctors to recommend a low dose of tamoxifen — a drug shown to reduce the risk of hormone receptor-positive breast cancer — as well as alternating MRIs and mammograms every six months.

You don't need a prescription or a doctor's order to use Clairity. Anyone who has had a routine standard screening mammogram within the past 12 months will be able to request the test on the Everlywell website. Everlywell will then retrieve the patient's image from the mammography center and feed it into Clairity's platform, which produces a digital report on the patient's risk. The report classifies patients as at average, intermediate or high risk of developing breast cancer over the next five years. It does not detect cancer itself.

Of course, there are critics who don't trust women and their doctors to use the information wisely. There are no guarantees. Just because you get a low score is not a substitute for regular screening. A high score may be the sign of a slow-growing cancer that might not be life-threatening. True enough. But shouldn't that be up to the woman and her doctor, not her insurance company? They should trust women with more information, not make that decision for them to save the insurance company money.

"Now that I have the information, I can do something about it," Ms. Hale said. Every woman deserves access to that information, not only those who can afford it.

I was representing Michael Milken 33 years ago when he was diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer and given a year to live. He was appalled by the state of prostate cancer research. He put his money where it was needed, founding CaP Cure, now the Prostate Cancer Foundation. In the years since, he has not only donated millions of dollars but raised more than $1 billion and funded more than 2,600 research projects at over 300 cancer centers. He continues to lead the fight.

Research saves lives. Women have been fighting to do the same for breast cancer. Insurance companies need to be part of that fight.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Angiola Harry at Unsplash