As you know (and as many of you no doubt watched on C-SPAN despite the early hour), cancer patients, survivors and their loved ones came one step closer to a remedy for our nation’s ‘sick care’ system after the Senate passed comprehensive health reform legislation on Christmas Eve. The legislation included a number of strong provisions that would significantly improve the health care system for cancer patients by refocusing the system to emphasize prevention; guaranteeing quality, affordable coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions; reducing the cost burden on families; eliminating lifetime coverage limits; covering routine health costs for those who enroll in clinical trials; and emphasizing patients’ quality of life.
Earlier in December, ACS CAN raised concerns about the negative impact of annual benefit limits on many cancer patients, and those concerns were heard by the Senate and the White House. In fact, the Senate bill is now stronger than the House version in that it would immediately require that annual limits be sufficient to cover essential benefits for all patients, and would completely ban annual coverage limits after 2014.
Despite the approaching holiday, staff and volunteers were working hard literally up until the last minute, meeting with lawmakers and their staff, holding press events, and sending calls and emails. ACS CAN’s health care reform campaign has been a hard-fought and at times a challenging issue for us, but our persistence will help cancer patients realize a dramatically better future. In fact, an editorial published in The New York Times on December 30, 2009 – “The Case for Reform” – references the American Cancer Society by name. It provides critical perspective about the work still to be done to reform our nation's health care system and more broadly supports the vision of the Society’s leadership in making the commitment to engage the enterprise in the fight to improve access to health care.