Secure Our Care launches new project protecting patients' access to testing

, /PRNewswire/ -- Older Americans deserve better choices and more control over their health care so they can receive the care they need. Often, our country's elderly population, especially those on Medicare, Medicaid and Medicare Advantage, are the last to acquire new and innovative healthcare tools. To help tackle this issue, Secure Our Care is joining the fight to ensure access to these resources and their coverage by Medicare and Medicaid, so that all Americans have access to exceptional healthcare. Cancer should be treated individually as opposed to the one size fits all approach that occurs when middlemen issue broad determinations, limiting patients', and their healthcare providers, access to life-saving options.

Unfortunately, many Americans know someone who has had to deal with cancer, especially as they grow older. In the United States, approximately 40.5 percent of people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lifetime – 57 percent of which are 65 or older. This is why we need innovative diagnostic testing to determine the best course of action for treatment for an individual patient's cancer as early as possible.

68 million people in the US get their healthcare from Medicare. An essential aspect of the Medicare system centers around Medicare Administrative Contractors, or MACs, which determine whether new tests and products should be covered by Medicare. However, they have placed Medicare coverage for innovative genetic testing – which would help determine the best course of care for bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer, skin cancer, and thyroid cancer, among other cancers– in jeopardy.

MACs have been allowed to run rampant with little oversight of the process by which they make local coverage determinations (LCDs). This threatens access to innovative cancer diagnostic testing. If Medicare fails to cover these tests, patients and clinicians will not use them, allowing for both over and under management of cancer patients. Doctors may instead turn to default treatment plans, which may be more intense and costly, or may allow patients harboring more serious diseases to be missed.

America's senior citizens shouldn't have to wait while rogue middlemen continue to make unilateral, flawed decisions that deny them the best available treatment options. Critical decisions about the best care for an individual senior who is diagnosed with cancer should be in the hands of medical professionals who are treating that senior, not third parties who have a financial incentive to deny access to innovative testing.

Medicare is a promise to our nation's seniors. It should safeguard them from unnecessary hardship later in life, not create more uncertainty and concern about the availability of the best treatment options.

Healthcare policy experts have been vocal about their support for giving seniors more control over their healthcare:

"The decision to end Medicare coverage of cancer tests will prevent doctors from being able to intervene earlier and match their patients with the treatment plans they need," said Saul Anuzis, President of 60 Plus. "It is disappointing to see middlemen repeatedly interfere in our healthcare and limit access to the innovative testing we deserve."

"Fixing the MAC system should be at the top of the list for a new administration that has put the center of its focus on changing how Washington operates," said Dr. Richard Carmona, MD. "President Bush said each generation has a duty to strengthen Medicare, and it is now this generation's turn."

"After PBMs, the new administration must look at MACs, who are threatening seniors' access to critical cancer testing," said Steve Forbes, Editor-in-Chief at Forbes Media.

SOURCE The 60 Plus Association