BOSTON — Cancer survivors convened on Beacon Hill late last month to deliver emotional testimony alongside advocates and lawmakers, urging passage of bills to expand access to biomarker testing and patient navigation services as an estimated 43,000 Massachusetts residents are expected to be diagnosed with cancer this year.
Among them was state Sen. Jacob Oliveira, D-Ludlow, the lead Senate sponsor of the biomarker bill, which he said would be a “game-changer, not just for the health benefits of it and for the patient, but it could save our health care system, because of the fact that with biomarker testing, you could have less costly treatments that people could utilize if they can pinpoint the treatment they need.”
After the public event on March 26, which was part of Massachusetts State Lobby Day, advocates from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) met individually with state legislators to encourage them to vote in favor of the bills.
According to the ACS, biomarker testing is the analysis of a patient’s tissue, blood or other biospecimen for the presence of a biomarker, which is a unique signal in a patient’s genetics that describes “a normal biological process, disease or abnormal function.” The system, the organization says, is revolutionizing treatment for cancer and other diseases, creating more effective and precise treatment strategies faster.
The biomarker testing bill would address health care inequities in the state by ensuring that comprehensive testing is covered by MassHealth and all state-regulated health insurance plans.
Biomarker-informed treatment leads to higher cancer survival rates, according to the ACS: “Real-world data also show a median survival of nearly 15 months for patients who received biomarker testing compared to nine months for those who did not — a 66% increase in median survival,” the organization says.
Overall, biomarkers “can be used to determine the best treatment for a patient” by helping to identify targeted therapies or immunotherapies most likely to be effective, while at the same time avoiding trial-and-error prescribing of treatments. ACS CAN released an explanatory video on its website to help people understand the benefits of biomarker testing.
One of the ACS Advocates who testified at lobby day was Teresa Simpson, an actress and two-time cancer survivor from Sturbridge who is currently battling ovarian cancer. In an interview with the Gazette, Simpson said, “At 30 I had thyroid cancer, at 50 I had breast cancer, and here I was, 63, thinking ‘uh-oh, is something really wrong here?’”
After doctors dismissed her abdominal pain as diet-related, Simpson decided to get a biomarker test. After that test, “the office calls, and says ‘oh my goodness. I guess there is something wrong. We’ll have you get a CAT scan.’ And I did, and it revealed there was cancer all over my abdomen, on my ovary, into my chest. It really looked very dire.”
She began chemotherapy immediately after, and has been undergoing treatment for nearly three years. Simpson decided that she wouldn’t sit idly by while undergoing chemotherapy, and began advocating on behalf of the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance.
“I decided it might be a good idea to be more active,” she said. “And if I’m in between treatments, if I’m feeling well enough, I want to do something, and so I became a patient advocate for them.”
Last fall, ACS CAN asked Simpson to speak at a rally in front of hundreds of survivors, advocates, and politicians in Washington, D.C. She has since become an outspoken advocate for ACS CAN.
“This is incredibly personal to me, because my particular cancer and some other cancers, their treatment really does depend on certain things they find in your tumor cells or in your blood,” said Simpson. “Because they can try the standard care, it seems to work for some and not for others. And now they can say, ‘Oh, she has this particular protein, or this particular genetic component,’ and they can target the medicine.”
Oliveira says expanding patient access to biomarker testing could help lower the cost of health care across the state by improving individually-targeted treatment and subsequently eliminating unnecessary treatment plans. That savings could then be redirected to addressing other health care related problems, such as a primary care crisis experienced by residents of western Massachusetts.
“Access to a primary care doctor is very difficult… Our hospital systems are facing instability. Bay State Health is estimating a $150 million cut for themselves by the big, ugly bill that was signed into law by President Trump,” he said.
Oliveira experienced this crisis himself. “I got dropped from my primary care doctor during the pandemic because I missed a couple of appointments, as many people did during the pandemic,” he said. “It took me nearly six months to find a primary care doctor in western Massachusetts.”
Patient navigation services
The second bill that advocates lobbied for focuses on extending patient navigation services, supportive measures designed to help individuals through the minutiae of complex diseases and illnesses, and overcome barriers to health care.
“That bill about the patient navigation, I thought was fantastic,” said Simpson. “Because if someone doesn’t have a clue about how to go ahead with their illness, having someone say, ‘OK, on Tuesday at one o’clock, this is what you do, and oh, you’re gonna need a wheelchair. OK, we’ll arrange for that’. Just having someone figure it out for you is so helpful.”
The event was part of a nationwide campaign by ACS CAN that has invigorated advocates and survivors across the country, and already led to the passage of major legislation; 23 states have passed bills to expand access to biomarker testing so far, with Mississippi being the most recent to do so.
“I know I can only do a small part. I’m not going to cure cancer, I’m not going to be president of the United States. I want to contribute in whatever way is useful. I have a big mouth and I like to talk. I always sell myself short because I thought, ‘I’m not a lawyer, I’m not a doctor, I’m not someone with anything important enough to contribute,’” said Simpson. “But I realized that’s not true, and especially looking around the room, everybody just has enthusiasm. That’s a big component, is to just feel passionate about something.”
The Massachusetts biomarker bill is currently in the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing. “I plan to file this as an amendment to the state budget for coverage, and I also plan to continue to speak out on it, to raise the level of attention on this issue,” Oliveira said. “People are seeing that this could be a game changer for a lot of folks, and that’s why the support has been bipartisan and overwhelming from our colleagues in the Legislature.”
James Noyes writes for the Gazette as part of the Boston University Statehouse Program.