Today the Melanoma Research Foundation sent out this Action Alert. If you would like to support congress allowing for Medicaid insured patients to also be eligible to participate in clinical trials, then contact your legislators. Here is the information from MRF:
Limiting an entire group of Americans from having access to clinical trials because of their socioeconomic status is neither fair nor ethical. Ensure routine cost coverage in clinical trials for 75 million Americans on Medicaid!
The MRF continues to affirm clinical trials as the best clinical option in the treatment plans of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Additionally, these trials collect valuable data in the development of therapeutics that can be used to improve patient care for future generations. Despite their many advantages, access to clinical trials is limited. Medicaid recipients are the only insured group of people with no coverage of routine costs associated with clinical trials. As a result, too many Americans cannot afford to even consider clinical trials as a possibility in their treatment plan.
You can help change this! The Senate version of the CLINICAL TREATMENT Act (S. 4742) was introduced in late September by Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Ben Cardin (D-MD). This bill would ensure Medicaid coverage of routine costs associated with clinical trial participation for patients approved by trial sponsors. The original House bill, H.R. 913, was introduced by Representatives Ben Ray Luján (D-NM-03) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL-12) and is bipartisan in nature with 56 cosponsors.
Write/Tweet to contact your lawmakers today and urge them to cosponsor S. 4742/H.R. 913 to improve access to clinical trials!
Here are the facts:
Medicaid remains the only major insurance program without a federal mandate to cover routine costs associated with clinical trials
Routine costs, as defined in the bill, include non-experimental costs including physician visits and laboratory tests. Under S. 4742/H.R. 913, the cost of the investigational therapeutic would still be covered by the sponsor of the clinical trial
Studies have shown that no significant Medicaid expansion would be required on the state level to cover these routine costs. These costs would normally be covered in a non-clinical trial setting
Medicaid recipients include people of minority groups and diverse ethnic backgrounds. Diversity is crucial to ensure that data collected in clinical trials is valid and generalizable
Peace,
Missy
