A proposal requiring health insurers to cover the cost of expensive cancer-treatment pills as a medical benefit was killed by the House Health and Human Services Committee on a 7-4 vote, Monday.
Senate Bill 250, sponsored in the House by Rep. Dianne Primavera, D-Broomfield, was intended to make oral chemotherapy drugs more available to patients recovering from cancer.
Currently, the drugs are covered by most insurers as a pharmaceutical benefit and are considered too pricey for many cancer patients who pay a percentage of their prescription costs.
The bill was backed by patient advocates and large pharmaceutical companies who maintained that the pills let cancer survivors continue working because the treatments can be taken at home or at work rather than administered intravenously in a cancer center.
The pharmaceutical industry has pushed similar legislation in 22 states, including Oregon where the policy became law in 2007.
But opponents of the measure, including insurers, argued that oral treatments are extremely expensive and few of the medications are available in generic form.
They also point out the therapies aren’t necessarily more convenient since cancer survivors still have to make follow-up visits while they’re being treated for the disease.
According to estimates from Kaiser Permanente Colorado, the cost of treating 500 colon-rectal cancer patients with a full range of intravenous treatments and services would be $850,000. Meanwhile, the cost of treating the same group with oral chemotherapy drugs would be more than $9 million.
One Republican lawmaker in the Senate estimated the mandate would raise insurance premiums for Colorado families by as much as $147 a month.
The bill was approved by the Senate, the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee and the House Appropriations Committee, but met its fate on Monday during a hearing from the House Health and Human Services Committee.
Republicans in the minority party had opposed the legislation, but the measure was defeated when Democratic Reps. Sara Gagliardi, D-Arvada and Jim Riesberg, D-Greeley, the chair of the committee voted in opposition to the bill.
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