Urge Medicare to fully reimburse for life-saving cancer treatment

As new treatments are developed for all kinds of illnesses, it is crucial for the Centers for Medicaid and Services (CMS) to pay for them as approved by the FDA so that patients will have access to them.   Some treatments may have components, such as Bexxar, which, as approved by the FDA, is a single treatment regimen consisting of 4 components, some of which CMS has misclassified as a supply or as a diagnostic, rather than as a drug.  This has resulted in reimbursement at less than cost which has led to serious underutilization and had an adverse effect on patient access to this life-saving treatment, which has shown to work when other treatments fail and to work for long periods of time.  Patients should not be deprived of this treatment due to a misclassification that causes doctors and hospitals not to use it.

We, the undersigned, therefore respectfully request and urge CMS to fully reimburse for all FDA-approved treatments and specifically, for 2012 and beyond, to appropriately classify all components of Bexxar as drugs and to fully reimburse for all its components using Average Sales Price (ASP) methodology.