Cancer Patients/Survivors Meet With
U.S. Rep. Andy Harris: “Don’t Cut Our Lifeline”
About a dozen volunteer advocates hold onto
life-preservers in support of Affordable Care Act protections
SALSIBURY, Md. – March 7, 2017 – About a dozen cancer patients, survivors and volunteers rallied outside the Salisbury office of U.S. Rep. Andy Harris earlier today to deliver the message that any changes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) must maintain critical patient protections while ensuring that coverage is affordable and adequate. Any changes to the law should provide equal or better coverage of cancer prevention, treatment and follow-up care.
“Without the ACA, I would not have received that life-saving care or I would be in insurmountable medical debt,” said Julienne Edwards, a colon cancer survivor and volunteer with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). “Congress needs to know exactly what they're taking away from people like me. If there is a treatment that can save our lives, we shouldn’t have to ruin our lives or the lives of the people we love trying to pay for it.”
Edwards joined other ACS CAN volunteers in attendance who held onto a lifeline connected to life-preservers to demonstrate support for the protections that cancer patients depend upon to beat the disease. Losing the protections under the current law would cut a lifeline to the more than 15.5 million cancer survivors living in the United States today.
Research by the American Cancer Society shows that uninsured Americans are less likely to get screened for cancer, more likely to have their cancer diagnosed at an advanced stage, and less likely to survive that diagnosis than their insured counterparts. Thus, having access to comprehensive health insurance coverage is particularly important for the 31,820 Marylanders who are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in 2017 and the estimated 254,540 Marylanders who are cancer survivors.
“Congress should ensure that coverage is affordable and adequate, while keeping the important patient protections under the ACA,” Edwards said.
Critical protections include:
• enabling young adults to stay on their parents' health plan until age 26;
• providing patients no- or low-cost life-saving screenings, such as mammograms and colonoscopies;
• preventing patients from having their coverage canceled when they get sick;
• banning annual and lifetime dollar limits on coverage; and,
• prohibiting patients from being denied health coverage because they have a pre-existing condition such as cancer.
Immediately following the rally, a delegation of ACS CAN volunteers met with the staff of Congressman Harris to discuss how the ACA has decreased Maryland’s uninsured rate from 11.3 percent in 2010 to 6.6 percent just five years later. They also delivered bags of lifesaver candies as a reminder of what the ACA protections mean to cancer patients.
As of the first quarter of 2016, 135,208 Marylanders enrolled in a Marketplace insurance plan, with 100,844 Marylanders qualifying for tax credits (74.6 percent). The average monthly tax credit was $243. Approximately 72,175 Marylanders (53.4 percent) qualified for plans with reduced cost-sharing.
ACS CAN, the nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society, supports evidence-based policy and legislative solutions designed to eliminate cancer as a major health problem. ACS CAN works to encourage elected officials and candidates to make cancer a top national priority. ACS CAN gives ordinary people extraordinary power to fight cancer with the training and tools they need to make their voices heard. For more information, visit https://www.fightcancer.org/.
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