Coverage for the Entire Cervical Cancer Screening Process Without Cost-Sharing: Lessons From Colorectal Cancer Screening

Allison Ruff, Diane M Harper, Vanessa Dalton, A Mark Fendrick
2022
Section 2713 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) includes provisions requiring that all ACA Marketplace and non-grandfathered private health plans eliminate cost-sharing (i.e., avoid charging copayments or coinsurance, regardless of whether the plan deductible has been met) for specific preventive health services, including screening for four common cancers: breast, cervical, colorectal, and lung. The primary motivation for removing consumer cost-sharing was to enhance
more » ... and reduce well-documented disparities in preventive care use. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has estimated that in 2020, 151.6 million people had access to free preventive care under the ACA (Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, 2022). A recent review reported that removing cost-sharing boosts the use of preventive services, which helps to decrease disparities and save lives (Norris et al., 2022) . This popular ACA provision is not without its limitations. One important shortcoming is that "full coverage" often includes only the initial screening test used to determine the presence or absence of a disease. This limitation is especially germane to cancer screening, because the completion of the cancer screening process may necessitate multiple additional tests to determine if malignancy is present (or not). Thus, in many cases, after receiving an abnormal initial test result, patients are often faced with a substantial financial barrier to completing the diagnostic process for breast, cervical, colorectal, and lung cancers (Institute of Healthcare Policy and Innovation, 2022). This incremental expense may worsen the emotional stress experienced during the period between the initial abnormal test result and the establishment of a definitive diagnosisdrecently referred to as "the cancer screening purgatory" (Tradeoffs Podcast, 2022) . Unified processes and advocacy are needed to bring about true full coverage for the entire cancer screening process. In this article, we recommend steps for achieving such full coverage of the cervical cancer screening process, based on successful efforts regarding colorectal cancer. The American Medical Association criteria are that a screening test must be safe to administer, reasonably priced, able to detect a high percentage of disease, lead to improvement in health outcomes, and be widely available, as must be any downstream interventions that are required after a positive test (Herman, 2006) . This explicit mention of downstream interventions is important, because it is rare for a single cancer screening test to determine the presence of malignancy. Consumer cost-sharing is associated with decreased use of evidence-based health care services and has been shown to worsen health disparities (Norris et al., 2022) . The requirement that patients pay substantial amounts out of pocket to complete Diane M. Harper reports a research contract with Roche currently to evaluate an economic model of cervical cancer screening strategies. Vanessa Dalton reports the following conflicts: Bayer (expert witness in HPV vaccination), Bind (consultant)
doi:10.1016/j.whi.2022.11.009 pmid:36529597 fatcat:43hsu6n7zjhahf3djegbq5fmiu