AHP's and the ACS

The American Cancer Society is among the groups protesting Mike Enzi's Association Health Plan Bill.  And they have some sound and not so sound reasons for this:

  In response to the bill, which likely will move to the Senate floor for consideration in May, the American Cancer Society plans to publish print advertisements that warn the legislation could reduce the ability of women to obtain coverage from health insurers for mammograms. Forty-nine states require health insurers to cover mammograms. Dan Smith, vice president of government relations for ACS, said, "Not only would this legislation wipe out guaranteed access to cancer screenings, it would remove coverage guarantees for clinical trials, off-label drug use and smoking cessation services."

The mammogram thing is a great point.  But off-label drug use?  Most Americans don't know what that is or why we should have it, particularly in the case of chemotherapy, and frankly, it's not such a great thing to use a large part of your ad campaign on behavior that is discouraged by the FDA.

Maybe we could talk about prenatal care coverage?  Or any number of other things Americans will immediately understand, that Association Health Plans could wreck?

Comments

[JR]

I'm not so sure that off-label drug use is not a big deal.

The question is whether doctors get to decide which treatments might have enough of a chance with a particular patient to be worth trying, or whether insurers get the extra leverage to intervene and say, nah, you don't fit the guidelines, so even though this was prescribed to you, we won't cover it.

Seems like kind of a big deal (even if tactically perhaps it's not so well-known...)

[spike]

I'm kind of surprised to learn that insurers cover off-label drug use at all. I wonder what the liability of that would be if off-label use resulted in a tragic outcome but the insurer approved it.