Iowa Action Center

Support effective Health Care Reform efforts and expand access to Health Care for all Iowans

When it comes to access to care, ACS is part of several coalitions working on health care reform measures. For example, a bill mandating that private insurance policies cover routine medical costs associated with participation in clinical trials. ACS is strongly supportive of policies that will enable cancer patients to participate in clinical trials because it saves lives and leads to life-saving research findings. However, currently there are significant disparities in this participation in our region. Very few minority or low-income patients participate, and at least part of the reason is the lack of insurance reimbursement for costs of care.

We will also be looking at other reforms that can be enacted at the state level to increase access to affordable health care coverage. ACS will work to change insurance practices that exclude people (disproportionately cancer patients) from coverage because of pre-existing conditions, lifetime and annual limits on coverage, and high co-pays and deductibles. These practices are adversely affecting thousands of Iowans, bankrupting many, and must be changed.

ACS recognizes that access to quality health care directly affects people’s ability to prevent, detect, and survive cancer. The sad reality is that too much cancer death and suffering today is attributable to gaps in our current health care system. Comprehensive reform is needed to ensure that cancer patients have access to high quality health care that is adequate, affordable, available and administratively simple.