Opinion: Trump administration puts cancer patients at risk

Proposed changes could restrict coverage, impeding access to innovative, more-effective treatments

In 2004, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. That day, I joined the other 1.5 million people personally affected by this cancer. It would come to redefine my life in more ways than one. But thanks to a to a team of nurses and doctors, countless radiation and chemotherapy treatments, procedures and a 14-hour surgery, I became a lung cancer survivor.

My story is common. While lung cancer remains the number one cancer killer, our chances of survival are increasing. Lung cancer death rates declined 45 percent from 1990 to 2015 among men and 19 percent from 2002 to 2015 among women. A concerted focus on prevention efforts and ever-widening treatment options have helped bring hope to patients and their families.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration is proposing to make this fight even harder. The Department of Health and Human Services released a proposal that would upend the protections that many cancer patients rely on.

Right now, Medicare prescription drug plans are required to cover all drugs in six classes of medications that treat complex illnesses like cancer, epilepsy, mental illness and HIV/AIDS. These protections ensure that vulnerable patient populations have access to a wide array of medication options to treat their illnesses, with the understanding that no two patients’ needs or conditions are the same.

But the administration’s proposal does not take these realities into account. Instead, the proposed changes would allow insurers to offer patients increasingly restrictive coverage, while impeding patients’ ability to access innovative, potentially more effective treatments. Clearly, this is unacceptable to the millions of patients and doctors who have come to rely on these treatment choices to fight these deadly diseases.

Lung cancer, in particular, is a complex and complicated disease, with successful health outcomes incumbent on treatment that is both targeted and individualized for each patient. By complicating treatment through needless new restrictions on what can and cannot be prescribed by medical providers, the administration is effectively turning its back on patients, survivors and those who may develop this disease.

Potential disruptions to carefully tailored treatment plans are cruel—plain and simple. Take it from someone who has lived this fight and continues each day to help guide others through it: Individuals living with cancer need our support. This proposal instead places more barriers in front of them. What many cancer advocates fear most is that these new, poorly conceived administrative obstacles hindering or disrupting patient access will have a chilling effect on those seeking or continuing treatment.

We should be empowering patients through our health care policy, not demoralizing them. These critical patient protections were put in place for a reason: to increase survival.

Access to treatment is fundamental to not only improving health outcomes but keeping hope alive. I continue to fight because I know that we can defeat lung cancer.

President Trump seems to agree, noting in his State of the Union address his commitment to cancer research and finding solutions for patients. But we cannot move forward if at the same time we are taking two steps back.

Rethinking this proposal and replacing it with ideas that put patients first is vital.

Lung cancer survivor Bonnie J. Addario and her family founded the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation in 2006, and then the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute in 2008.