2025 Legislative Priorities

2025 Tennessee Legislative Priorities  

Victory in the fight against cancer requires bold new public policies that promote cancer prevention, early detection of cancer, and expand access to quality, affordable health care. Lawmakers make many decisions that impact the lives of Tennesseans impacted by cancer and their leadership is vital to defeating this disease. In 2025 the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) will work with the Tennessee General Assembly on legislative and regulatory efforts that provide affordable, adequate access to health insurance including Medicaid, ensure adequate funding for lifesaving cancer screening and prevention programs, and enact prevention policies to protect kids from tobacco products and help support those who are trying to quit. We will be making the following fact-based policies a priority and ask for your support:  

Ensuring Access to Quality Care 

• Access to Biomarker Testing: ACS CAN will advocate for improved coverage of comprehensive biomarker testing. Progress in improving cancer outcomes increasingly involves the use of precision medicine, which uses information about a person’s own genes or proteins to better diagnose and treat diseases like cancer. Biomarker testing is an important step to accessing precision medicine which includes targeted therapies that can lead to improved survivorship and better quality of life for cancer patients, but insurance coverage for biomarker testing is failing to keep pace with innovations and advancements in treatment.  

• Paid Family and Medical Leave: ACS CAN will advocate for legislation that ensures all working cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers have access to paid family and medical leave that allows them to take time off work to attend to their own or a loved one’s care without losing their job or income. 

• Medicaid Expansion: ACS CAN will advocate for low-income individuals and families to have access to comprehensive health insurance coverage and non-emergent medical transportation services through state Medicaid programs. We will support policies that preserve funding and access to Medicaid for low-income parents and adults including changes to Medicaid that enhances coverage, benefits, eligibility, or quality of care and improvement of Medicaid systems. ACS CAN will advocate for Medicaid expansion in states that have not increased eligibility up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. 

Cancer Prevention and Early Detection 

• Breast and Cervical Cancer: ACS CAN will advocate to maintain funding for Tennessee Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program, the state breast and cervical cancer screening and treatment program for low-income uninsured and underinsured women administered by the Tennessee Department of Health. 

Reducing the Toll of Tobacco  

• Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Funding: ACS CAN will work to increase funding to $4.6 million for fact-based, statewide tobacco prevention and cessation programs.  This is especially important as Tennessee has the third highest adult smoking rate in the country and ranks fourth in smoking-attributable cancer deaths. Increasing funding will allow more individuals to quit smoking and prevent children from ever starting a lifetime of addiction to tobacco.  

• Access to Tobacco Cessation: ACS CAN will advocate for all insurance plans, including the state Medicaid program, known as TennCare, 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.