
Coronavirus and Cancer Resources for Survivors
Cancer survivors have expressed concerns and questions about COVID-19, the coronavirus, and how they may be at higher risk due to their cancer history. Here are some resources about COVID-19 generally, and its impact for cancer survivors specifically. NCCS is seeking answers from public health experts on the coronavirus and its impact on cancer patients and survivors. Please leave a comment [...]

What Caught Our Eye: How the Senate Tax Bill Affects Health Care, Surgical Relief for Lymphedema, and An Investigation Into Exorbitant Costs of Care
What Caught Our Eye is our week-in-review blog series, where we recap the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. “JCT says Republican tax plan will add $1 trillion to the deficit” — There is no consensus among economists about the amount of growth that would occur under the plan, but key models predict it would not cover its cost. Find out more about the implications of the tax bill. [...]

What Caught Our Eye: ACA Individual Mandate Explainer, Medicaid Work Requirements, Metastatic Breast Cancer Research, and More
What Caught Our Eye (WCOE), November 17, 2017 — “Obamacare’s individual mandate, the new target in the GOP tax plan, explained” | The revised Senate tax bill would repeal the individual mandate. Repealing the mandate — which is the gear that makes the Affordable Care Act tick — would save more than $300 billion over 10 years, but only because millions fewer Americans would have health insurance, according to the Congressional [...]

ACA Update | November 17, 2017 – Tax and Health Care Repeal Bill Passes House, Focus Shifts to Upcoming Senate Vote
The tax bill has officially turned into a health care bill. Last week, we learned the House version of the tax bill would eliminate the medical expense deduction. This deduction is a lifeline for cancer patients who claim it, as cancer care and the enormous out-of-pocket costs associated with it often result in financial toxicity and financial distress. As the LA Times reports, “What’s cruelest about the effort to repeal the medical expense deduction [...]

What Caught Our Eye: ACA Open Enrollment Info, Tax Bill Eliminates Medical Expense Deduction, A Young Med Student’s Lymphoma Story
What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) is our week-in-review blog series, where we recap the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. Affordable Care Act – It’s Open Enrollment Season! Do You Know Your Health Insurance? – It’s officially “open enrollment season” and that means millions of Americans are about to dive into an alphabet soup of insurance choices. To help with this problem, Merck collaborated with health literacy [...]

What Caught Our Eye: ACA Premiums; Excessive Cancer Care; Saving Lives With Policy; Horrifying Hospice Care; Cancer Drug Efficacy; and More
What Caught Our Eye is our week-in-review blog series, where we recap the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. “When Silver Costs More Than Gold: How Trump’s Actions Have Scrambled Insurance Prices” Via New York Times — The rates for next year’s Obamacare plans are out, and they show how President Trump’s actions have scrambled the insurance marketplace. Usually, plans known as gold have higher monthly [...]

ACA Update | October 27, 2017 – CBO: Bipartisan Alexander-Murray Bill Would Cut Deficit by $3.8 Billion
This week proved to be another busy week in health care. NCCS led a team with representatives from other cancer patient advocacy groups to attend meetings with Senators to encourage them to support the Alexander-Murray bipartisan stabilization bill. The Alexander-Murray bill would fund cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments through 2019 and restore $106 million of the funding for enrollment outreach over the same time period. In exchange for [...]

ACA Update | October 23, 2017 – Bipartisan ACA Stabilization Bill an Important Step Forward
For months, Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) have been working on a market stabilization bill that would fund the cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and include other provisions to keep insurers in the markets. The stabilization bill was tabled when the Graham-Cassidy legislation was being considered, but now that efforts to repeal the ACA have stalled, Senators Alexander [...]

WCOE: Bipartisan Health Care Deal Details; Fertility Banks Underused by Young Male Survivors; Cancer Stress; High Drug Pricing; and More
What Caught Our Eye is our week-in-review blog series, where we recap the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. “The Senate’s new Obamacare stabilization deal, explained” – By Dylan Scott, Vox.com — We have an Obamacare stabilization deal. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, who had been working with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray for the past few months, announced it this afternoon. This would be [...]

NCCS’ Ellen L. Stovall Award Reception Recognizes Two Individuals Advancing Patient-Centered Cancer Care
The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) presented its second annual Ellen L. Stovall Award for Innovation in Patient-Centered Cancer Care last night in Washington, D.C. After a nationwide competition, a distinguished selection committee chose this year’s winners, Pat Coyne, MSN, of the Medical University of South Carolina and Meg Gaines, JD, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Mr. Coyne was nominated by [...]

ACA Update | October 13, 2017 – Trump Administration Cuts Off Cost-Sharing Payments, Signs Executive Order to Undermine the ACA
After the actions President Trump took this week, there’s no question the Administration is actively working to undermine the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Yesterday, the President signed an Executive Order making sweeping changes to the ACA that would hurt patients and disrupt the ACA marketplace and he announced the Administration would halt cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments. NCCS is alarmed by the efforts to undermine [...]

