2010 Legislative Session: February Update
Idaho Legislative Session
February has proven to be a pivotal month for our legislative issues, and many thanks go out to you, our volunteers, who wrote letters, made phone calls, and personally visited your legislators talking to them about our issues in general or targeted legislators regarding specific issues. Hearing from constituents continues to be the most effective way to make ACS CAN, cancer fighting issues a priority in the Idaho legislature.
Women’s Health Check- ACS CAN supported an increase to funding for Idaho’s Women’s Health Check to provide free breast and cervical cancer screenings for women who qualify. Because of the present general budget constraints, it was decided that the best mechanism for increased funding would be through the Millennium Fund.
Both the Joint Millennium Fund committee and the Joint Finance and Appropriations committee -JFAC(the budget setting body) voted to almost triple the amount of funding towards this lifesaving program. This exciting increase of $150,000 will allow breast and cervical screenings and diagnostics to be extended to all women over age 18, who would otherwise go undiagnosed and therefore untreated until much later, if at all.
Millennium Fund (tobacco prevention and cessation programs)- ACS CAN supports the state’s annual appropriations and future funding from the Millennium Fund to be used for tobacco education and prevention funding. Additionally ACS CAN supports the funds being utilized for tobacco prevention and cessation that comport with CDC best practices for tobacco control.
The Joint Millennium Fund Committee demonstrated its commitment to tobacco control programs with an over $600,000 increase to such programs for the next fiscal year. In a year when budgets are tight and the Governor chose very different priorities this marks tremendous progress with the Millennium Fund.
Chemotherapy Disparity- ACS CAN supports measures to ensure all state-regulated insurance plans provide coverage for orally administered anticancer medication no less favorably than intravenously administered or injected medications covered as medical benefits in state regulated insurance plans.
In January ACS CAN, the Idaho Medical Association, St. Luke’s, Regence Blue Shield and Blue Cross of Idaho met with several legislators to further discuss this issue and determine if a solution could be found short of changing state statute. From this meeting the insurers have written letters, expediting their current process and committing to further review the issue in order to assess its true scope.
Idaho Updates
