proposed law that ends an expensive difference between cancer-fighting drugs that are injected and those that are swallowed is halfway through the legislature.
Kansas City Senator Ryan Silvey doesn’t know why chemotherapy in pill form became so much more expensive than chemotherapy delivered through injections. It has taken several years to get the interested parties to agree on a system that treats them almost equally in terms of insurance coverage.
Patient advocates, insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry have finally found common ground on a bill that lets insurance companies charge no more than 75 additional dollars each month for anti-cancer medications that are swallowed, not injected. That cost would be reduced as deductibles increase.
One Senator who often complains that government intervenes too much in private business wonders why the insurance industry needs a law to force it to change the way it covers anti-cancer medications.
If the House agrees and the governor signs the bill, the new law will go into effect January first.
