Over 40 medical associations recently teamed up to write a 28-page letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' National Cover and Analysis Group calling for Medicare coverage of low-dose CT (LDCT) screening for patients who are at a higher risk for lung cancer.

This past December, the U.S. Preventive Services Take Force (USPSTF) recommended annual LDCT for high-risk smokers. Those included 55 to 80 year olds who have a history of smoking a pack per day for 30 years or two packs per day for 15 years and those who currently smoke or have quit in the past 15 years.

The Affordable Care Act states that the USPSTF grade B recommendation guarantees that private insurers must cover LDCT without requiring a co-pay but it does not extend that coverage to Medicare recipients.
"This is a public health imperative — CMS must support the USPSTF recommendations with the exception of the arbitrary fifteen year cut-off to ensure equitable access for our most vulnerable populations, our seniors and disabled," Laurie Fenton Ambrose, president and CEO of the Lung Cancer Alliance, told DOTmed News in an email.

The joint letter asks CMS to offer national coverage for those high-risk individuals based on USPSTF recommendations, and also provide evidence-based coverage using data collected through existing registries for other high-risk individuals not cited in the recommendations.

More people in the U.S. die from lung cancer than any other type of cancer, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. In 2010, 201,144 people in the U.S. were diagnosed, and 158,248 died from lung cancer.

CDC also states that cigarette smoke causes about 90 percent of lung cancers. According to the letter, LDCT is cost-effective and the only method that is proven to reduce lung cancer mortality for current and former smokers.

Among those associations who sent the letter to CMS are the American College of Radiology, the Lung Cancer Alliance and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

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