On February 15, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a proposal to cover chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for cancer patients who are participating in clinical trials that study treatment effectiveness.

This proposal would require CMS to cover nationwide CAR T-cell therapies "when the treatment is offered in CMS-approved registries or clinical studies in which patients are monitored for 2 or more years following treatment."

“Today’s proposed coverage decision would improve access to this [CAR T-cell] therapy while deepening CMS’s understanding of how patients in Medicare respond to it, so the agency can ensure that it is paying for CAR T-cell therapy for cases in which the benefits outweigh the risks.” --CMS Administrator Seema Verma

A final decision to the proposal is expected May of 2019.

This is incredibly hopeful for myeloma patients as many are on Medicare/Medicaid. We look forward to this coverage approval and it can't come soon enough for patients enrolling on CAR T studies. 

Read the full article.

Read the proposal summary.