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What Caught Our Eye: A Story of Two Survivors’ Enduring Friendship; GOP Still at Odds on Healthcare; Living with an Ostomy; The Perils of Hype in Cancer
What Caught Our Eye is our week-in-review blog series.“This is a story of survivors — of patients who were expected to die more than two decades ago but didn’t.” STAT News’ Bob Tedeschi provides an in-depth look Dr. Brian Druker and three of his patients, including Doralee Mortensen and Judy Orem, who became best friends after meeting in the clinical trials for the cancer drug Gleevec in the late 1990s.

Pre-Existing Conditions and High Risk Pools: A Cancer Survivor’s Experience Purchasing Insurance Before the ACA
My story began ten years ago in April when I was diagnosed with Stage III colon cancer. The treatments were successful in that the cancer cells were eliminated, but my liver was damaged by the toxic effects of the chemotherapy and the radiation. My company was very supportive and I continued to work through my long recovery period. But after several years I found that the travel demands of my job were taking too great [...]

ACA Update | April 21, 2017: House GOP Readies a Revised Health Care Bill
“Healthcare is not dead, we’re still working on it.” – Paul Ryan | During recess this week and last, Members of Congress continued to hear from constituents at town hall events where a major focus has been on health care and backlash against efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, the conservative House Freedom Caucus has been working with moderate Republicans to come up with an amendment to add to the [...]

What Caught Our Eye: A New GOP Health Plan, Looming Uncertainty for Insurers, Sharing Genetic Cancer Risks with Children, and More
Trumpcare is back. And worse than ever. — Via Vox.com — “House Republicans are floating a new amendment to their health care bill — one that would likely cause even more Americans to lose coverage than the last version. Leaders of the staunchly conservative Freedom Caucus and the more moderate Tuesday Group have reportedly hashed out a proposal that would let some states ditch key Obamacare policies, such as the [...]

ACA Update | April 14, 2017: Town Hall Headlines, Cost-Sharing Subsidies, the “Death Spiral”, and Trump’s Final “Market Stabilization” Rule
Although Members of Congress are on recess this week and next, talks of ACA and its future continue. Grassroots support of the ACA has made headlines again at town hall events across the U.S. during this recess. CBS News reports on several town hall meetings, where Republican lawmakers faced intense criticism for their position the American Health Care Act (AHCA). The Hill reports that some Members of Congress are [...]

What Caught Our Eye: Costs of Care in a For-Profit System; New ACA Reporting; Precision Medicine; PSA Testing; End of Life Care
What Caught Our Eye is our week-in-review blog series, where we recap the cancer policy articles that caught our attention. Published this week, Elisabeth Rosenthal’s An American Sickness: How Healthcare became Big Business and How You Can Take it Back describes the business of health care and how it fails patients. See her interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, as well as her tips for consumers to avoid unnecessary costs. [...]

ACA Update | April 10, 2017: New GOP Proposal Would Undermine Pre-Existing Condition Protections
As talks of repeal and replace quickly resurfaced after the downfall of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), Republican’s newest proposals are even more devastating for cancer patients than the AHCA would’ve been. The newest Republican health care proposals would eliminate even more patient protections, including the essential health benefits that require insurers to cover services such as chemotherapy, hospital visits, [...]