This week, I was invited to speak about the realities of Massachusetts's health care reform at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network's National Forum on the Future of Health Care in Washington, DC. Because our reform serves as the model for the Affordable Care Act, and because our experience is so often misrepresented in the public discourse, I welcomed the opportunity.
Yesterday was an incredible day at ACS CAN we held our first-ever National Forum on the Future of Health Care and it was a huge success! The conference focused on how to ensure that people living with cancer and other chronic diseases have access to quality health care.
I had the privilege of participating in an ACS CAN event in Seattle yesterday that really illustrated the importance of federal funding for cancer research. We partnered with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to emphasize that research funding doesn't just fight cancer, it pours money back into local economies and creates jobs.
As the second anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) approaches, we decided it was a good time to check in with the call center specialists at the American Cancer Society's National Cancer Information Center (NCIC) to ask them how one aspect of the law the new Pre-existing Condition Insurance Programs (PCIPs) is impacting people with cancer.
Big Tobacco is about to meet a challenge in the state of California. Yesterday, ACS CAN CEO Dr. John Seffrin announced a pledge to support California's Proposition 29, the California Cancer Research Act, an historic ballot initiative that would make California the second largest funder of cancer research after the U.S. federal government.