Vermont 2024 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 Vermonters impacted by cancer and their leadership is vital to defeating this disease. In 2024 the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) will work with the Vermont 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.

Cancer Prevention and Early Detection

• HPV: ACS CAN supports legislation to increase uptake of the HPV vaccine including policies to strengthen school vaccination requirements, facilitate pharmacists’ ability to administer vaccines to children, and appropriate funding for HPV vaccine education and administration. 
• Remove copays for cancer screenings: ACS CAN will advocate for legislation to eliminate cost sharing for follow-up cancer screening tests that are needed after an abnormal result and supplemental screening needed for some individuals who are above average risk.

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 by $1 million. Increasing funding by $1 million will allow the program to restore services to providers for youth looking to quit tobacco use and increase counter advertising measures to block the tobacco industry from targeting a next generation of addicted youth.
• 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.
• Menthol Cigarettes and All Other Flavored Tobacco Products: ACS CAN supports legislation to end the sale of menthol cigarettes and all other flavored tobacco products. Comprehensive policies to end the sale of flavored tobacco products must include all tobacco products, all flavors, and all tobacco retailers. Flavored tobacco is a known tobacco industry strategy used to attract new users, especially youth. More than 8 in 10 teens that have used tobacco products started with a flavored product. However, use of flavored tobacco products to attract new users is not limited to youth. Big Tobacco has targeted specifically African American and LGBTQ communities. As a result of industry targeting, both communities use menthol cigarettes at disproportionately higher levels. To prevent youth and young adults from using tobacco products and reduce tobacco-related health disparities among BIPOC and LGBTQ communities, ACS CAN will advocate in support of ending the sale of menthol cigarettes and all other flavored tobacco products (including flavored cigars, e-cigarettes, and smokeless tobacco).

For more information, contact Mike Rollo, Vermont Government Relations Director ACS CAN
[email protected] | 603.661.8974