A bill pending in the Mississippi Legislature to ban health insurers from making patients pay higher out-of-pocket costs for oral medication taken at home than for chemotherapy received in a health care facility could help save lives, a local American Cancer Society volunteer told Port City Kiwanis Thursday.

“Currently insurance can charge more for cancer drugs that are self administered at home than if the same medicine is administered by a doctor in a medical setting,” Pearl Carter, a volunteer with the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network told the club.

The Cancer Action Network is the lobbying wing of the American Cancer Society.

One version of House Bill 952 passed the Senate after more than an hour of debate Wednesday. It will likely go to a final round of House-Senate negotiations later this month.

Several organizations, including the lobbying group for the American Cancer Society, held a news conference earlier this month to urge legislators to pass the bill. Brandon resident Jennifer Burrell-Richards said she was diagnosed in 2013 with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, and her medication is available only as a pill. Still, she said her insurance company paid less for the pill than it would have for an intravenous drip form of chemotherapy. She said that left her family with out-of-pocket expenses that ranged from $1,300 to $1,800 a month. Under the bill, she said, she would be able to pay $35 a month for her medication.

“Debt is piling up,” Burrell-Richards said March 2 at the Capitol.

Deepening debt prevents some patients from seeking treatment, Carter said.

“Because of this disparity, cancer patients across the nation who don’t have the advantage of good insurance that does cover their medication, simply opt out of taking it because they can’t afford it,” Carter said.

Carter was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1990 and became a cancer society volunteer in 1991. In 2010, she was diagnosed with leukemia, for which she takes an oral chemotherapy drug. Carter said she was lucky that her insurance covers the cost of her home-administered medication.

“I’m one of nine siblings. Seven of us have had some time of cancer. Three of us have had more than one type of cancer,” Carter said.

The bill overwhelmingly passed in the House and a revised swept through the Senate, leaving hope for a joint agreement.

“I feel fairly confident that it’s going to pass,” Carter said.

Republican Sen. Terry Burton of Newton said more than 30 other states already do what Mississippi is proposing. He said it is unfair to patients that insurers won’t cover a big portion of the cost for cancer-fighting drugs that are available only in pill form.

Burton said several of his friends, including former senators, have had to sit for hours in hospital rooms for the slow drip of chemotherapy, and the treatments sometimes left them feeling so ill that they had to spend extra days there.

“Why in the world would anybody have to come up with more money out of their pocket to take a drug in the comfort of their own home?” Burton said.

Republican Sen. Chris McDaniel of Ellisville, one of the three senators who voted against the bill, said the state should not dictate terms of private contracts, including insurance coverage.

The Senate fell silent as Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, talked about his wife’s recent diagnosis with breast cancer. He said he wondered immediately how he and his wife would pay the medical bills, even with her relatively good insurance coverage.

“When it’s you, it’s different,” Wiggins said. “I support the private market. I support capitalism. But it’s easy to stand up here and talk about it when it’s not affecting you.”

McDaniel responded that he and his wife have both lost loved ones to cancer, and he’s sorry for what the Wiggins family is experiencing. McDaniel said that doesn’t mean it is right for the government to interfere in the private market.

“The cost is too high. The cost is prohibitive. It’s a nightmare,” McDaniel said of cancer treatment. “It’s because of the government regulations and interference that we are paying this cost, and that’s why the philosophy matters.”

Others voting against the bill Wednesday were Republican Sens. Melanie Sojourner of Natchez and Michael Watson of Pascagoula. Republican Sen. Angela Hill of Picayune voted “present,” which counted neither for nor against the bill.

 

The Associated Press Contributed to this report.