US Medicare facing appeals to pay for tumour sequencing

Experts are increasingly calling for the USA's Medicare and Medicaid welfare systems to cover payments for the gene-sequencing of the tumours of cancer patients, in order to push forward the science surrounding the cutting-edge treatment of cancer, and to benefit the patients themselves by tailoring the treatment of their cancer to the genetic fingerprint of the tumour. Commentators describe the current situation as a "standoff" with Medicare arguing that the scientific community have not demonstrated the efficacy of sequencing, whilst the researchers claim they cannot prove its worth without a large patient population paid for by Medicare. Since Vice President Biden's call for a cancer "moonshot" movement, the clamours calling for the state to pay for tumour sequencing have grown increasingly loud. Commenting on the calls Amy Miller, executive vice president of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, said “If we’re going to have payers not paying for personalized diagnostics, we’re going to have a really big problem. We need our payment policy to keep up with the science.”

Calls intensify to get Medicare to pay for genetic sequencing of tumors

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is facing growing calls to allow Medicare and Medicaid to pay for advanced gene-sequencing of tumors, a step proponents say will help both cancer patients and scientific research.

The appeals have grown louder since Vice President Joe Biden announced his “moonshot” to cure cancer, and top researchers said they raised the issue in a private meeting recently with Biden’s staff. The issue also came up during the vice president’s trip last week to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

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So-called next-generation sequencing can be used to analyze tumors in a more comprehensive way and more quickly than with previous methods. The sequencing allows doctors to determine whether emerging treatments are likely to work for a particular patient — part of a movement toward so-called personalized medicine.