Colorado Ovarian cancer initiatives
During the Colorado Legislature’s 2009 session, COCA supported bills to require private health insurance plans to cover routine patient care costs for policy holders enrolled in a clinical trial; to add $25 to the fee for purchase of a breast cancer license plate, which will help to fund eligibility expansion for the Breast and Cervical Cancer Medicaid Treatment Program (Women’s Wellness Connection), and to direct a legislative interim committee to examine gender discrimination in rating for individual health benefit plans. These bills were adopted.
We also supported a bill to require insurance companies to cover oral chemotherapy at a cost no less favorable to the consumer than intravenous chemotherapy. This bill was not adopted this session, but we will support a revival of the bill during the 2010 session.
We supported efforts to protect health care funds from being raided to close the state’s budget gap, but we were unsuccessful. Because of the recession, every part of the state’s budget lost something during the 2009 session.
On May 29, 2009, Nancy Zurbuch Wilson, Lucy Trujillo, and Mary Phillips met with Rosemary Rodriguez, Senator Michael Bennet’s State Director, and the Senator’s health care staff. We described COCA’s activities and requested that the Senator support an improvement in access to health care.
We also emphasized Medicare reform, including repeal of the two-year waiting period for Medicare disability and equalizing treatment options among the Medicare regions.
For example, currently, the regional contractor for Colorado’s region (VIII) will not cover Avastin as an off-label use for ovarian cancer, while contractors for other regions will. We have been working with Representative DeGette’s and Senator Bennet’s offices on this issue, and Senator Bennet’s staff will now organize a “delegation letter” to Medicare protesting about the unequal and discriminatory treatment of ovarian cancer sufferers in Colorado. These letters are almost always effective, and we hope that Medicare will rethink its policy of allowing regional contractors, which are private insurance companies, to made medical decisions on a local level.
If you are interested in helping us with local, state and national ovca initiatives, please call 1.800.428.0642 or email info@colo-ovariancancer.org.