The Cancer Support Community supports the Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act, H.R. 2407 / S. 2085 (Nancy Gardner Sewell), to create a new coverage pathway, giving people on Medicare access to new, breakthrough screening technologies that detect cancer at earlier stages. This bipartisan bill would modernize Medicare to allow for coverage of blood-based multi-cancer early detection tests and future screening test technologies, such as urine, stool, or hair tests, once they are approved by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA).
The creation of new cancer screening tests is the first step toward saving more lives by detecting cancer early. People must be able to access, afford, and benefit from them. There must be policy solutions to ensure that new screening tests are available to everyone.
Screening tests can help find cancer early, when the cancer may be more easily treated. Currently, screening tests are recommended for only 5 cancers — colorectal, cervical, breast, lung, and prostate cancer. Most other types of cancer do not currently have screening tests available. It can be more difficult to detect those types of cancer until a person shows symptoms, and oftentimes this means that the cancer is caught at a later stage. Approximately 7 out of every 10 cancer deaths are attributed to cancers that lack early detection screenings.
