TheNational Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Office of PersonnelManagement (OPM) provided formal comments on a draft of this report.

They also can’t put a lifetime limit on essential health care benefits. CHAMPUS, the Department of Defense'shealth care program for active duty and retired military personnel,and their dependents and survivors, considers ABMT for breastcancer experimental but provides coverage through a demonstrationproject in which beneficiaries may receive ABMT by enrolling inone of three NCI randomized clinical trials.

Because high-dosechemotherapy is toxic to the bone marrow (which supports the immunesystem), methods have been developed for restoring the bone marrowby reinfusing stem cells (the bone marrow cells that mature intoblood cells) taken from the patient before chemotherapy.

The laws insix of the states require coverage whether or not the patientis enrolled in a clinical trial, while one state requires patientswith certain types of breast cancer to join well-designed randomizedor nonrandomized trials. You can also contact your insurance company to find out about your costs. Sarah F. JaggarDirector, Health Financingand Public Health Issues. There are some financial assistance grants that you may qualify for.

To develop this information, we conducted structured interviewswith officials responsible for medical coverage decisions at 12health insurance companies, including some of the nation's largestinsurers. Specifically, you asked that we address(1) the factors that have influenced insurers in deciding whetherto cover the treatment, (2) the status of the research on ABMTfor breast cancer and the consensus on what is known about itseffectiveness, and (3) the consequences of the increased use andinsurance coverage of the treatment while it is still being evaluatedin clinical trials.

It is vital to have an international medical insurance that includes a strong evacuation medical cover.

Furthermore, insurerssay that legislation mandating coverage of specific treatmentsis a poor way to make medical policy and that it distorts themarket because self-funded plans are exempt from state mandates. Joining a state risk-pool program. But the best way to get the information you need is to call our talented and licensed international medical insurance agents here at 866-636-9100 or feel free and use our Arizona phone number at 480-633-9500. For the most part, the insurers said theyfound different courts to be widely inconsistent in ruling whetherABMT is experimental and should be covered, a point also madein reviews of case law on the issue.

This is evidenced both by the extremesickness and side effects that patients may experience and bythe higher rate of treatment mortality for ABMT than for conventionalchemotherapy. Despite its increased coverage and use, most experts say theydo not yet know whether ABMT for breast cancer is effective, andfor which patients, compared with conventional therapy. Ava, transplant recipient with her marrow donor, Michelle.

Copyright © 1996-2020 National Marrow Donor Program. Does my health plan cover all parts of the transplant process? If you go on Medicare, consider adding a Medicare supplement plan, to help with costs that Medicare doesn’t cover.

In recent years, conflictover insurers' coverage decisions of new medical treatments hasled to litigation and to a variety of federal and state legislationand regulations that mandates insurance coverage of some new medicaltreatments. In September 1994, OPM imposed a requirement thatparticipating health insurers must cover ABMT for breast cancerfor all FEHBP beneficiaries both in and outside of clinical trials.OPM acknowledged to us that the evidence is mixed on the effectivenessof ABMT for breast cancer. Some of the oncology experts we spoke with included Karen Antman,md, Columbia University; Lois Ayash, md, the Dana Farber CancerInstitute; Craig Henderson, md, the University of California,San Francisco; Roy Jones, md, the University of Colorado CancerCenter, William Peters, md, the Karmanos Cancer Institute; EdwardStadtmauer, md, the University of Pennsylvania; and James Vredenburgh,md, Duke University Medical Center.