To the editor:
As a cancer patient, I will be negatively impacted if President Trump’s push for most favored nation (MFN) status with Medicare Part B drug and treatment pricing is passed.
The MFN model could limit my access to lifesaving therapies for treatment. It could also drastically change the way Medicare pays for certain drugs, including oncology drugs.
By the Trump administration’s own estimates, nearly 10% of people covered by Medicare would simply “forgo access” to treatment in the first year of the MFN model and almost 20% by the end of the second year.
In 2019 I was diagnosed with both polycythemia vera and essential thrombosytis. They are both cancers that effect reproduction of too many blood cells. These cancers will probably affect my taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
It is especially alarming to me that the Trump administration has issued this rule — called by the Community Oncology Alliance “a cruel and heartless experiment” — during the middle of COVID-19.
Please contact Sen. Grassley, Sen. Ernst and Rep. Axne or your congressperson to stop the implementation of the MFN rule on behalf of all Iowans fighting cancer.
Julie Stewart Ziesman
Waukee
