Blog Entry: June 30th, 2009

Two male cancer patients - similar cancer, background, insurance - visit their doctors for routine care related to their cancer treatments. The insurance company covers the costs of one of the patients but not the other, why?

This past spring, Texas became the 26th state to approve legislation requiring health insurance companies to cover routine patient care costs associated with a clinical trial. These costs do not include procedures conducted for research purposes or include costs that would not normally be covered for patients not enrolled in a clinical trial. Instead, routine costs include doctor visits, hospital stays, x-rays, lab work -- care that would normally be covered for patients but is denied to many due to being enrolled in a clinical trial.

Clinical trials are vital to cancer research; today's clinical trials are tomorrow's standard treatments. Currently, only 3% of all eligible patients are enrolling in trials, resulting in many closing early or never even getting off the ground. With the current economic climate and rising costs of health care, the fear of even routine care not being covered by insurance companies creates a significant barrier to clinical trial enrollment. Legislation such as that recently passed in Texas, greatly reduces this barrier and increases access.

I am proud to say that two of our colleagues from the Tacoma, Washington PEP site are working to achieve similar legislation in Washington. Samantha Yeun and Jay Zatzkin have been working from within the Washington Comprehensive Cancer Control Partnership to educate on the important role cancer clinical trials play in cancer research and treatment development. In part due to their efforts, one of the partnership's current objectives is to advocate for the state of Washington to pass legislation mandating insurance coverage of routine medical costs for those enrolled in cancer clinical trials. We have high hopes that not only Washington, but the other remaining 24 states follow suit and pass similar legislation so that my earlier story becomes that of fiction in all 50 states.