HAN1036_oral_chemo_Transcript.rtf

- Now back to the State Capital where a coalition of Wisconsin's leading healthcare advocates have been working to increase cancer patients' access to chemotherapy, specifically bills in both the Assembly and Senate would require insurance plans that offer intravenous chemotherapy to their patients, to also cover chemotherapy delivered in pill form. Adam Schrager shows us patients see a measure about treating all chemotherapies equally, while critics view it as a mandate that will raise costs statewide.

- I'm currently an active cancer patient.

- Adam: Paul Westrick's doctors are treating his bone marrow cancer with an oral chemotherapy taken at home every day, along with a an IV chemotherapy given every other week at the hospital.

- Everybody that I know is either, had direct or indirect experience with cancer. It's a fact of life. We want access to the best care.

- Adam: His health insurance pays for both treatments. He's now lobbying Wisconsin lawmakers to make sure all Wisconsin cancer patients have the same coverage.

- To me this bill is modernizing cancer coverage for Wisconsin citizens. It's really creating more uniformity for how people get access to care.

- Adam: Wisconsin law currently views oral chemotherapy as a prescription drug benefit, and IV chemotherapy as a medical benefit. This means insurance companies are not required to cover oral chemo medicines. The result can cost a cancer patient, who takes the medication orally, tens of thousands of dollars.

- I do have an interesting perspective on this because--

- Adam: Rebecca Kleefisch was campaigning in the summer of 2010, when the 35-year-old was diagnosed with colon cancer, a grapefruit size tumor in her stomach. Following surgery, she took both an oral and an IV chemotherapy.

- The healthcare plan that we chose, many moons ago, covered it.

- Adam: She can see both sides of this issue

- From a policy side, I look at this legislation and I see a mandate. I know people say, oh, it's not a mandate. To me, I don't like it. I feel like it steps in and demands something on a private enterprise. I'm a free market guy. I don't like mandates. From a personal side, who am I to take both intravenous and oral chemotherapy and have been lucky enough to have picked the right health plan at the time, years and years before I ever was diagnosed with cancer, and it ends up being covered. Who am I to sentence someone else to a lifetime of fundraisers because I said that this wasn't legislation that I should support?

- Adam: Wisconsin's health insurers have spoken out at the Capital against the measure, saying the legislation does not address the rising cost of chemotherapy drugs, but simply shifts costs around.

- What happens if the cost that was born by a few individuals gets moved into the costs for others?  Those costs are going to go up.

- Adam: Phil Dougherty says he's sympathetic to patients with large bills, but that what's proposed at the Capital doesn't solve their problems.

- And we certainly understand that that's a difficult issue, but the issue underlying that problem is the high cost of those prescription drugs and the legislation that's been proposed won't do anything to address that.

- But we always have to look at the cost side of things. These drugs are expensive, but so are the infused agents.

- Adam: Paul Westrick is not just a cancer patient but a hospital administrator, as well. He knows all cancer care is expensive, but that more and more pills to treat it are coming on the market. His message to Wisconsin lawmakers, bring the law up to speed with the technology.

- Our policies around healthcare coverage are outdated. So again, they were created in a day when pharmacy was not that high-cost and the medical treatment was.