WASHINGTON – It was about 4 p.m., and Judy Von Bergen had been vomiting since her mastectomy that morning. She was lying in a hospital bed when a few nurses came into her room with news: It was time for her to get ready to leave.

“How in the world can I go home?” Von Bergen, 61, of Madison, Wis., remembers thinking. But the nurses gave her a shot to settle her stomach, helped her dress and sent her on her way. “There are advantages to getting out as soon as possible,” she said. “But it would have been comforting if I would have been able to spend one night in the hospital.”

Despite an online petition with 20 million signatures supporting federal legislation that could prevent insurance companies from covering only these so-called drive-through – or outpatient – mastectomies, Congress has been slow to act. But after more than 10 years of proposing similar legislation, proponents of the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act are hoping that with Democrats controlling Congress the measure might finally be approved. “Until this past year, the party in the majority (Republicans) has been opposed to health-care legislation,” said Dr. Kristen Zarfos, director of the Comprehensive Breast Health Center at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Conn.

Zarfos, who brought the issue of outpatient mastectomies to the attention of bill sponsor Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., in 1996, said the legislation is supported by members of both sides of the aisle. The Senate bill is sponsored by Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine.

“It really isn’t a partisan issue,” Zarfos said. “Women’s breast cancer isn’t a partisan issue.”

At the moment, the bill has 217 co-sponsors in the House and 18 in the Senate, and DeLauro’s office said the lawmaker is “cautiously optimistic” about the bill’s chances.

The legislation would mandate that insurance companies cover a hospital stay for up to 48 hours after a mastectomy or lumpectomy, and 24 hours after a lymph node dissection. It would not require a minimum stay time, but instead would allow a patient and her doctor to agree on a release date.

It also would compel insurance companies to inform policyholders of this benefit in monthly mailings and yearly information packets.

And it would require insurance companies to cover a second opinion if the patient did not approve of a first diagnosis. Twenty states, including Illinois, have laws that curtail the number of outpatient mastectomies and, in cases where the state law is more stringent than the proposed federal law, the state law would apply.

The current industry standard for hospital stays after a patient undergoes a mastectomy is a minimum of one night, according to the American College of Surgeons.

However, not all experts agree that outpatient mastectomies are bad.

“I think if you speak with breast cancer patients treated today, that the majority would much rather go home with a Band-Aid on their breast and under their arms than to have to stay overnight in an unfamiliar and not-so-comfortable hospital bed for 48 hours,” Dr. Henry Kuerer, training program director in the Department of Breast Surgical Oncology at the University of Texas’ cancer center in Houston, said in an e-mail.

“This so called “drive-through mastectomy’ sounds cruel and callous, but in 2008 I would say that it is more or less a historical myth.”