Rep. Mia Ackerman gets biomarker bill signed
PROVIDENCE – A bill pursued by state Representative Mia A. Ackerman, D-Dist. 45, Cumberland and Lincoln, to have private health insurers cover the costs of biomarker testing could help cancer patients with the cost of fighting their illnesses.
Ackerman’s bill H-7587A, and companion legislation by Senate Majority Whip Maryellen Goodwin, D-Dist. 1, Providence, received House and Senate approval in the past legislative session and was recently signed into law by Gov. Daniel J. McKee during a ceremony at the Statehouse.
“We are all touched by cancer whether it is ourselves or a family member dealing with it,” Ackerman said of the legislation on Tuesday.
“This will require health insurers to cover the cost of biomarker testing and enable doctors to do more pinpoint diagnostic testing and treatment so that people will have fewer out of pocket expenses,” Ackerman explained.
Biomarker testing helps a patient’s physician identify a more specific course of treatment for their illness but can be an expensive burden on top of costs of other treatments a patient will require, Ackerman noted.
“Biomarker technology allows doctors to pinpoint treatment that has the best possibility for success for an individual patient. It saves lives, time and money, and it’s an important advantage in the fight against cancer. Covering it just makes good sense for insurers and patients alike,” Ackerman noted.
Ackerman said she just had a conversation with a person undergoing treatment for cancer who explained how he had undergone biomarker testing to help identify what treatments he would need.
“He had to pay for his biomarker testing on his own and it cost him a few thousand dollars,” Ackerman noted.
And depending on what course of treatment a patient faces, their medical costs could run into the tens of thousands of dollars, Ackerman added.
During the House hearing on her bill, Ackerman said members of the Brown University oncology staff testified that biomarker technology was the “wave of the future” in determining the proper course of treatment for cancer.
“Anything we can do to improve the outcome, we have got to do it,” Ackerman said.
Ackerman and Goodman’s legislation specifies that every policy offered by health insurers, nonprofit hospital service corporations, nonprofit medical service corporations, and health maintenance organizations provide coverage for biomarker testing by Jan. 1, 2024.
Testimony provided by the International Cancer Advocacy Network (ICAN) in support of the bill, maintained nothing helps more than biomarker testing in finding the right drugs at the right time for each individual cancer patient, Meredyth Whitty, a House spokesperson, noted in an announcement of the legislation’s signing.
Testimony by Marcia K. Horn, ICAN president and CEO, offered that Biomarker testing replaces educated guesswork with scientific evidence and makes truly personalized, precision medicine possible, according to Whitty.
Horn and other supporters noted that an insurance requirement would be especially helpful to those in disadvantaged populations, who are more likely to lack such coverage, Whitty noted.
In addition to ICAN, the legislation was supported by the American Lung Association in Rhode Island, the American Cancer Action Network, the Hospital Association of Rhode Island, the Legorreta Cancer Center at Brown University, the Global Colon Cancer Association, the Lung Cancer Research Foundation, the Latino Policy Institute and the National Marrow Donor Program as well as others submitting testimony, according to Whitty.