Access to Care

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Access to quality, affordable cancer care is essential for anyone with a cancer diagnosis. Access includes adequate health insurance that covers needed treatments without leaving people with cancer to suffer “financial toxicity.” People with cancer also need the ability to participate in a clinical trial, if it represents a potential treatment option.

Prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), cancer survivors were at the mercy of the health care system, often forced to pay exorbitant premiums or simply denied coverage altogether. Today, America’s 18.1 million cancer survivors benefit from the ACA’s patient protections that provide them with quality, affordable, and accessible health care coverage. Through the ACA, cancer patients and survivors can now purchase insurance through Healthcare.gov and state insurance exchanges. The ACA has afforded protections related to out-of-pocket expenses, lifetime caps, and pre-existing conditions.

Cancer Nation believes in the following principles for access to care:

Individuals with pre-existing conditions must not be denied coverage or charged higher premiums.
Plans must cover all essential health care needs.
Adequate financial assistance must be provided to ensure people with low and moderate incomes can purchase health insurance.
Insurers must not discriminate against older Americans, who are disproportionately impacted by cancer, or women.
Cost-sharing protections must be maintained, including caps on out-of-pocket costs and the elimination of annual and lifetime maximum benefits.
States should take advantage of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, which provides coverage to low income individuals living with cancer.
People with pre-existing conditions must not be segregated into high-risk pools, which are expensive and burdensome and do not meet the needs of cancer patients.
Cancer patients must have access to comprehensive and well-coordinated cancer care, including clinical trials.

“For a cancer survivor, dealing with the collateral damage of cancer treatment and the continued surveillance for recurrence or secondary cancers, going without insurance is simply not an option. I am very worried that the proposed replacement for the ACA will harm cancer survivors, particularly people with low incomes and people over the age of 50. We simply can’t go back to the days before the ACA when cancer survivors could be denied coverage, and we must ensure people have access to quality, affordable health insurance.”

Michael Kappel, Cancer Nation board member and 13-year colon cancer survivor

What Caught Our Eye: AHCA Would Cause 50% Rise of Uninsured Children, Crowdfunding Health Care Tragedies, Rare Cancers, and More

June 16, 2017

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. In the Spotlight: “New Analysis Finds Uninsured Rate for Kids Would Increase by 50% Under AHCA” – If the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) becomes law, the uninsured rate for children would increase by a whopping 50% by 2026 according to a new analysis by the Center on Budget [...]

NCCS Joins 120 Patient, Provider, and Consumer Organizations to Oppose Medicaid Cuts and Funding Caps

June 15, 2017

The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) joined with 120 leading patient, provider and consumer organizations to express grave concerns about potential Senate actions on Medicaid. Together, the groups implored Senate leadership to protect the Medicaid program and oppose efforts to roll back Medicaid expansion or change Medicaid’s funding in a way that would harm patients and consumers. In a letter to both [...]

ACA Update | June 9, 2017: Senate Finding Ways to Repeal ACA

June 9, 2017

There have been several key developments in the past week, starting with Republican leadership sharing a bill of the Senate’s version of the AHCA at a caucus luncheon on Tuesday. The public has yet to see the language being considered, as there have been no public hearings or input from experts in the health care or patient advocacy space. NCCS understands the bill will likely be quite similar to the House version. [...]

What Caught Our Eye: Poor Doctor-Patient Communication; Senate GOP & Medicaid Cuts; Using Cancer “Battle Words;” News from ASCO17

June 9, 2017

What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) is our week-in-review blog series. June 9, 2017 | In the Spotlight: Via USA Today — For patients near the end of life, talking about their goals and values can help people avoid unwanted medical interventions, said Dr. Rachelle Bernacki, associate director of the Serious Illness Care Program at Ariadne Labs, a health care research center led by Dr. Atul Gawande. [...]

My Takeaway from Hill Visits: Empathy is in Short Supply

June 6, 2017

With the health reform debate moving to the Senate following passage of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) in the House, I’ve spent the last few weeks meeting with numerous Senate offices on both sides of the aisle. During one such meeting with a Republican Senator’s health policy team, I outlined the many reasons the AHCA would be harmful to cancer patients, survivors, and their families. High on that long list of issues are the [...]

ACA Update | June 2, 2017: AHCA is Widely Unpopular, Senate Continues Negotiations

June 2, 2017

During meetings with Senate offices this week, NCCS learned that negotiations continue and a consensus on the Senate version of the AHCA has yet to be struck among Republicans in the chamber. However, we also learned alarming news that the Senate version is likely to be very close to the version the House passed in early May. Anything that remotely resembles the AHCA would be catastrophic, and we cannot allow such a [...]

What Caught Our Eye: Only 31% View AHCA Favorably, Immunotherapy Hope & Hype, Male Breast Cancer, the Stigma of Lung Cancer

June 2, 2017

What Caught Our Eye (WCOE), June 2, 2017: “Kaiser Health Tracking Poll Shows Americans View AHCA Unfavorably” — With Congress currently discussing the American Health Care Act (AHCA), a plan that would repeal and replace the 2010 health care law, this month’s Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that more Americans have an unfavorable view of the plan than a favorable one (55 percent vs. 31 percent, respectively). [...]

ACA Update | May 26, 2017: CBO Confirms 23 Million More Uninsured Under AHCA, Trump Undecided on 2018 Subsidies

May 26, 2017

This week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their analysis on the impacts of the American Health Care Act (AHCA). As expected, the results were devastating. The AHCA would leave 23 million more Americans uninsured by 2026 than under the current law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The coverage [...]

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Access to Care

What Caught Our Eye: AHCA Would Cause 50% Rise of Uninsured Children, Crowdfunding Health Care Tragedies, Rare Cancers, and More

NCCS Joins 120 Patient, Provider, and Consumer Organizations to Oppose Medicaid Cuts and Funding Caps

ACA Update | June 9, 2017: Senate Finding Ways to Repeal ACA

What Caught Our Eye: Poor Doctor-Patient Communication; Senate GOP & Medicaid Cuts; Using Cancer “Battle Words;” News from ASCO17

My Takeaway from Hill Visits: Empathy is in Short Supply

ACA Update | June 2, 2017: AHCA is Widely Unpopular, Senate Continues Negotiations

What Caught Our Eye: Only 31% View AHCA Favorably, Immunotherapy Hope & Hype, Male Breast Cancer, the Stigma of Lung Cancer

ACA Update | May 26, 2017: CBO Confirms 23 Million More Uninsured Under AHCA, Trump Undecided on 2018 Subsidies

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