WASHINGTON — The Trump administration finalized late Wednesday long-sought rules for when Medicare will cover CAR-T treatments, the cutting-edge, often curative therapies that harness patients’ own immune cells against their cancer.
Under the new policy, Medicare will pay for CAR-T therapies so long as they’re administered in health care facilities that follow the Food and Drug Administration’s special safety rules, known as risk evaluation and mitigation strategies, or REMS. Medicare will also pay for CAR-T even when it’s used to treat conditions that aren’t FDA-approved. The two CAR-T treatments on the market, Gilead’s Yescarta and Novartis’ Kymriah, are approved to treat non-Hodgkin lymphoma and acute lymphoblastic leukemia, respectively.
The policy is likely a positive development for hospitals, which have groused that lack of clear rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, combined with these treatments’ sky-high price tags, has hindered uptake.
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Really buried the lead in there: “Wednesday’s announcement does not, however, ensure that hospitals are breaking even when offering CAR-T treatments. CMS’ coverage policy does not change how much CMS reimburses for CAR-T treatments, which currently cost over $300,000.”
Is there an expectation that there will be a CAR-T Therapy for MDS patients in the future?
“The agency also abandoned its previous idea of requiring hospitals collect data on how patients fare when they receive these treatments.” Why was this not put in the final policy? As a taxpayer and cancer patient I want to know how well these drugs work over the broadest, most varied population. There may be exceptions.
All hospitals and healthcare facilities are already collecting data on CAR-T patient outcomes, as dictated by the CIBMTR. The proposed questions from CMS were more about tracking patients’ perceptions of their outcomes, and they offered no centralized registry with which to do the tracking.
I’m glad to hear that they will cover these. Nothing’s sadder than the thought of a child having a curable otherwise fatal illness and them getting a call from your insurance company “Hey, I got something funny to tell you. Since you are on indigent insurance, we won’t pay for your medicine. Your parents should have chosen a better paying profession.”
And yes, I realize this is Medicare, but the decision can be duplicated by Medicaid.
This is wonderful news for patients. Let’s keep the momentum moving forward!
Go Medicare and Medicaid!!!
So…Medicare is going broke in just a few years without reductions in reimbursement to hospitals and physicians, BUT it will pay for a $300,000 drug therapy??? How does that make ANY sense?
Medicare is not going broke just as the sky is not falling. If you needed this treatment to live, would you say “no, let me die, this treatment cost too much”?
Teresa,
A doctor walks in. They tell you: $30,000 chemo = 90% chance you will die a slow painful death. A $300,000 cell therapy = 93% chance you will survive. You want your insurance company to say well Teresa, I sure hope you have $300,000 saved up today. If not, well let me write you a referral to a good mortician.