The Hill News

The recently appointed Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction has to find at least $1.2 billion in cuts to federal programs before the end of the year.  Not an easy task by anyone’s standards.  But one proposal on the table â€" to cut $3 billion in reimbursement to doctors who care for Medicare beneficiaries â€" is likely to shift the war on cancer to the war on cancer care.

On behalf of our nation’s twelve million cancer survivors, National Patient Advocate Foundation urges the Super Committee to maintain access to cancer care in the local oncologist office. Cancer patients are fighting the fight of their lives.  They need access to care that is affordable, obtainable and within their means to access.  

NPAF and its companion organization, Patient Advocate Foundation (PAF), helped nearly 83,000 patients in the country break through barriers to care in 2010.  Seventy percent of these patients were cancer patients facing devastating financia! l hardships at one of the most difficult times in their life.  One in four of them were Medicare patients, two-thirds had annual household incomes of less than $23,000 and many were disabled.

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