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Oral Cancer Drugs Deserve Parity
Margaret Dick Tocknell, for HealthLeaders Media, May 25, 2011
There have been some legislative efforts to bring parity to oral cancer drugs so that insurance companies treat them the same way as injectable cancer drugs.
The American Cancer Society takes a cautious approach to oral parity. Stephen Finan, senior director of policy for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, said in an e-mail that the group is monitoring the issue "to better understand how health plans are handling coverage for both oral and injectable treatments -- specifically to make sure that affordability isn't challenged through increased premiums, stricter utilization management tools or exclusion of anti-cancer medications from formularies to contain costs."
Margaret Dick Tocknell is a reporter/editor with HealthLeaders Media.
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Comments are moderated. Please be patient.
Todd Madden (5/25/2011 at 3:44 PM)
Its the same old tired argument. Instead ranting about what health plans or more accurately, employers are covering, why not discuss the high costs of medications? And why more isn't being done to bring done costs either through other markets (Oh Canada) or through regulation. Nothing in the Unaffordable Care Act keeps the costs of drugs down. Yet legislators love to prey on the ingnorence of Americans by continuing to pressure health plans without addressing the root cause of the high costs. Good luck.