Patient & Provider Advocates Applaud Senate Reintroduction of the Cancer Drug Parity Act
The Coalition to Improve Access to Cancer Care (CIACC) and its members from across the cancer patient and provider community today applauded Senators Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Tina Smith (D-MN), for re-introducing legislation to bring fairness to the way that cancer medications are covered by insurance companies.
“The Cancer Drug Parity Act of 2023” will end the out-of-pocket cost disparity for orally administered cancer treatments for the approximately 110 million patients covered by federally-regulated group health plans.
Currently, most insurance companies place traditional IV anticancer treatments under a patient’s medical benefit, while oral anticancer treatments are covered as part of a patient’s prescription drug benefit. Because of this discrepancy, patients on oral treatments can be forced to shoulder much higher out‐of‐pocket costs for their medications. For some cancers, oral medications are the only line of treatment.