Don't limit coverage of cancer treatment

IMAGINE you have been diagnosed with cancer and need chemotherapy or radiation treatments, but regardless of what your doctor prescribes, your insurance plan limits the overall expense or number of times you can receive the treatment.

This frightening and dangerous scenario is not hypothetical; it is now playing out in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Connector Board is scheduled to vote tomorrow on potential changes to Minimum Creditable Coverage, which is the most basic coverage that an individual must have to satisfy the state's individual mandate. In regulations proposed earlier this summer, chemotherapy and radiation therapy are not considered "core services" and can be subject to limits by health insurers. The Connector Board should vote to reject any limits on these lifesaving treatments.

Massachusetts is to be commended for reducing its uninsured rate to the lowest in the nation, but it is a meaningless rank if a person's health insurance is only covering them when they are not sick.

As the Commonwealth realized more than two years ago, we can do better than the current healthcare system in the United States. We have to. To get there, we need a national debate about how best to improve it.

From the beginning of its innovative approach, Massachusetts realized the quality of the debate is as important as the quality of care. By putting aside tired partisan arguments that have divided the country and doomed healthcare reform in the past, the Commonwealth's leaders worked across the political and public spectrums. Businesses, healthcare providers, community organizations, state and federal government, Democrats and Republicans were all at the table, working as colleagues for a common solution. As the presidential race enters its final weeks, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama owe the public their vision of how they will include every stakeholder in a way that serves us all.

Nearly 46 million Americans have no health insurance, and an estimated 25 million have inadequate insurance that won't cover critical treatments for life-threatening diseases such as cancer. As a result, people are being forced into crushing medical debt to bridge the gap between where their health insurance stops and where their recovery begins. It is a false choice between personal health and a family's financial survival.

The economic crisis gripping the nation only exacerbates the harsh financial circumstances faced every day by those with cancer and those at risk. Putting the country on firm economic footing will require that we improve access to care for everyone.

Moving toward that goal, in just two years Massachusetts cut the number of uninsured from 650,000 to approximately 200,000 people. The shared sacrifice and civil tone shown by every stakeholder is a model for the rest of the nation, starting with the two presidential candidates. While there are valid differences of opinion among Connector Board members on issues of critical importance to Massachusetts' health reform, discussion and debate have occurred in the inclusive and solution-oriented environment established by the board. This gives us all hope that these discussions can be replicated elsewhere in the nation. It also gives us hope that the Connector Board will ensure that adequacy remains an equal partner to affordability and accessibility when it comes time to decide what constitutes real health insurance.

What we need as a nation is what Massachusetts has already shown is possible, that we can work across party lines to create meaningful reforms and we can reject extreme views designed to provoke rather than to provide. With its vote tomorrow, the Connector Board has the opportunity to solidify Massachusetts' position as a national leader in providing healthcare for the uninsured and underinsured, and to remind us all that healthcare reform is about more than policies - it is about people.

John R. Seffrin is the national chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. Donald J. Gudaitis is the chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, New England Division.