2024 Kentucky Legislative Priorities

2024 Kentucky Legislative Priorities

Reducing the Toll of Tobacco

• Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Funding: ACS CAN will work to increase funding for fact-based, statewide tobacco prevention and cessation programs to $10 million.  Increasing funding to $10 million will prevent 2,400 Kentucky teenagers from growing into adults addicted to deadly nicotine products, provide vital resources to help adults who want to quit smoking, and save hundreds of millions of dollars in averted healthcare and business costs associated with treating tobacco-related disease caused by tobacco products.
• Access to Tobacco Cessation: ACS CAN will advocate for all insurance plans, including the state Medicaid program, to provide a comprehensive cessation benefit that covers individual, group, and telephone counseling and all FDA-approved tobacco cessation medications without cost-sharing or other barriers to accessing care.
• Smoke-free Air: ACS CAN will work to implement additional local   comprehensive smoke-free ordinances that cover all workplaces including restaurants, bars, and gaming facilities. ACS CAN will work to defend existing smoke-free ordinances against any exemptions. ACS CAN will work to expand local ordinances to prohibit the use of e-cigarettes.

Cancer Prevention and Early Detection

• Breast and Cervical Cancer: ACS CAN will advocate to maintain a funding stream for the state breast and cervical cancer screening program for low-income, uninsured and underinsured women administered by the Kentucky Department for Public Health.
• Colorectal Cancer: ACS CAN will work to increase funding for colorectal cancer screening, treatment, and patient navigation programs. Additionally, ACS CAN will work to ensure health plans cover colorectal cancer screening beginning at age 45 in accordance with updated American Cancer Society and United States Preventive Services Task Force guidelines and ensure patients are not charged for colonoscopies that follow a positive stool-based test.
• Prostate Cancer: The higher incidence and mortality rates for Black men for prostate cancer are exceptionally concerning. ACS CAN supports improving prostate screening rates and reducing disparities by advocating for appropriate screening measures. This includes policies that would give men at high-risk for prostate cancer improved access to prostate cancer screening by requiring health insurance coverage for evidence-based prostate cancer preventive care and screenings without cost sharing.
• Lung Cancer: ACS CAN advocates for all insurance plans, including traditional Medicaid, to provide a comprehensive benefit for lung cancer screening, including all follow-up testing according to recommended guidelines, without enrollee cost sharing or other barriers.

Cancer Research Funding

• Comprehensive Cancer Control Program Funding: ACS CAN will work to protect appropriations for state comprehensive cancer control programs.
• State Cancer Registries: ACS Can will work to protect or increase appropriations to support state cancer registries, which provide the data-driven foundation for the state cancer control efforts.

Ensuring Access to Quality Care

• Access to Biomarker Testing: ACS CAN is an advocate for improved insurance coverage of comprehensive biomarker testing. Biomarker testing, which uses a person’s own genes or proteins to better diagnose and treat diseases like cancer, is an important step to accessing precision medicine. These targeted therapies that can lead to improved survivorship and better quality of life for cancer patients. The legislature took decisive action and passed the biomarker bill (HB180) during its 2023 regular session. The new law becomes effective January 1. We are working to ensure patients and providers are aware of the new law.   
• Affordable, Adequate Health Insurance: ACS CAN will advocate for policies that ensure access to quality, affordable and comprehensive health insurance, including Medicaid, and will support efforts to curb the availability of inadequate health plans.
• Network Adequacy: ACS CAN will support legislation regarding health insurance network adequacy to help ensure that cancer patients and cancer survivors have access to appropriate medical specialists they may need.
  
  For more information, contact: Doug Hogan, ACS CAN Kentucky Government Relations Director 

[email protected] Phone 502.545.6299  

ACS CAN is making cancer a top priority for public officials and candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. ACS CAN empowers advocates across the country to make their voices heard and influence evidence-based public policy change as well as legislative and regulatory solutions that will reduce the cancer burden. As the American Cancer Society’s nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate, ACS CAN is critical to the fight for a world without cancer. For more information, please visit www.fightcancer.org.