Biography

Congresswoman Deborah Pryce
Efforts To Fight Cancer
Co-Chair, House Cancer Caucus
Updated, May 2007

Legislation

Patient Navigator, Outreach, and Chronic Disease Prevention Act

In 2005, Pryce joined Rep. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) to introduce bipartisan legislation that puts forth creative and innovative approaches to increase access to quality care and prevention for medically underserved patients.
From her daughter Caroline’s diagnosis to her final days, navigating through the complex healthcare system was overwhelming at times. For someone who had health insurance and a law degree, it seemed like charting a course for treatment would be relatively easy. This certainly was not the case. Throughout Caroline’s battle with cancer, she ran into significant barriers. She could only imagine what it would have been like to have additional hurdles standing in the way that she didn’t have, such as language, cultural, distance, or financial barriers.
Through implementation of “p atient navigator programs,” patient navigators would assist individuals in obtaining coverage through Medicaid or other sources, help them obtain cancer screening or counseling about disease prevention, and make referrals for treatment should an abnormality be detected.
Pryce shepherded this legislation through the House and worked closely with her counterparts in the Senate to bring the bill to the President’s desk in June of 2005. She joined President Bush and her colleagues at the White House as he signed into law her patient navigator legislation.

Access to Cancer Therapies Act

In the 107 th Congress, Pryce first introduced legislation to ensure that seniors have access to quality cancer care by updating Medicare to cover innovative oral anti-cancer drugs.
When science first brought us treatments for cancer such as radiation and chemotherapy, these therapies were covered under Medicare Part B because they were administered in a hospital or outpatient care setting.
In 1993, as research yielded new self-administered (oral) delivery methods for many of these treatments, Congress updated Medicare to include coverage for self-administered therapies as long as they were also available in an injectable form. This expansion ensured seniors continued access to the latest cancer treatments.
However, since the turn of the century, our vast public investment in cancer research has yielded new and better treatments for various types of cancer. Many of these therapies are available only in oral form, as this delivery device is often more effective with fewer side effects than an injectable. However, because they are administered solely in oral form, Medicare does not cover these life-saving treatments. Lack of coverage often means that any beneficiary without an alternative method of payment must default to older, often less effective treatments in order to obtain coverage through Medicare. The devastating impact of this coverage shortfall becomes clear when one understands that more than half of all cancer diagnoses are within the Medicare population and that 20% of all Medicare beneficiaries have at least one cancer diagnosis.
During consideration of the Medicare Modernization Act, Pryce fought to secure expedited coverage of oral anti-cancer drugs to insure that seniors fighting cancer have access to cutting-edge, breakthrough cancer medications. While these drugs would be covered under the new prescription drug benefit that was slated to begin on January 1, 2006, Pryce was successful in getting immediate coverage of oral anti-cancer drugs for thousands of seniors across the country.

Access to Cancer Clinical Trials

In an effort to increase enrollment in cancer clinical trials and give cancer patients the best hope for survival, Pryce has authored legislation to require health plans to pay for the routine care costs when a cancer patient enrolls in a clinical trial.
While access to care is critical, treatments are not possible without medical research. For those fighting cancer, clinical trials are the best hope that new, cutting-edge treatments can be discovered and cancer patients can be cured.
However, only 3% of cancer patients enroll in clinical trials.
Part of the problem is that many health insurers refuse coverage for a patient’s routine care costs (e.g., physician visits, blood work, etc. – care the patient needs because they have cancer, not because they have enrolled in a trial) if the patient enrolls in a clinical trial.
This legislation was included in the Patients Bill of Rights that passed the House in 2001, but was not taken up by the Senate.
Pryce will be reintroducing the bill in the coming weeks.

Conquer Childhood Cancer Act

Pryce is the author of legislation that will provide hope and resources for children fighting cancer.
In March 0f 2007, Pryce joined a bipartisan group of Members to introduce legislation that will:
- provide increased support for biomedical research programs into pediatric cancer;
- establish a childhood cancer database to help researchers identify genetic causes of pediatric cancer and develop prevention strategies;
- authorize the development, construction, and operation of a comprehensive online information system to provide patients and their families with information on childhood cancer and cancer support services; and
- establish a fellowship program in pediatric cancer research to encourage young researchers to focus on pediatric oncology.

Compassionate Care for Children Act

In 2003, Pryce and Congressman John Murtha (D-PA) introduced the Compassionate Care for Children Act to improve the pediatric palliative care system for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families.
From her own experience, Pryce saw first-handthe challenges that seemed to be everywhere in trying to get her daughter the best health care and the right answers when she was sick.
The experience taught her that pediatricians need to be better trained to look for even the most subtle signs of cancer and parents need to better understand what is going on because they are the ones who must advocate for their children in the cancer system. Also, the lack of understanding of pain thresholds for children proved to be a significant challenge and frustration during her daughter’s treatment.
The bill will fill in the gaps she identified through her own experience and will knock down barriers standing in the way of families trying to access the best care options for their child. The bill provides grants to children’s hospitals, hospices and home health agencies to better train and educate professionals who care for sick children, and dedicates funds to conduct research for pediatric pain and symptom management.
As well, she found that the current health care system does not account for the special needs of children – current law requires a child and his or her family to forgo curative treatment for their child to qualify for hospice care and the child must also be diagnosed with only six months to live before he or she can access hospice care. The bill will waive those requirements and allow children to have access to a full range of care options that most appropriately meet their needs.

Children’s Hospital Graduate Medical Education (CHGME)

Last year, Pryce helped to successfully ensure record funding authorization levels to the Children’s Hospital Graduate Medical Education (CHGME) program in the amount of $330 million, and extend this funding system through Fiscal Year 2011.
Before 1999, only hospitals that treated Medicare patients received funding to train physicians.
Realizing the inadequacy in the law, Pryce led efforts to change the law to bring children’s hospitals up to par with other hospitals – so that they, too, could receive funding to train pediatricians and pediatric specialists. In 1999, she worked to secure $40 million for the first year of the program.
Under the CHGME system, children’s hospitals train a large portion of the future pediatric workforce – almost 30% of pediatricians and 50% of pediatric specialists.
Since 1999, funding for this program has increased exponentially.

From 2000 to 2005 under CHGME, Columbus Children’s:

Increased physicians trained annually by 126%.
Increased residency and fellowship programs from 13 to 29, including starting programs in areas of local and national shortage such as pediatric endocrinology, surgical critical care, child neurology, and child abuse and neglect.
Initiated programs for primary care in underserved urban and rural communities.
Maintained its core missions of patient care and research. Because CHGME has provided for the costs of residency training just as the federal government has always done for adult hospitals, these improvements in education and training of physicians for children have not come at the expense of patient care or research.
In 2005, Columbus Children’s Hospital received roughly $9 million under the program.

Pediatric Rule

Pryce authored legislation in the House to protect what is known as the “Pediatric Rule”
The rule requires drug companies to conduct safety tests of adult medicines most likely to be given to children.
Preserving the rule and providing incentives for testing medicines for kids give doctors the information they need to provide our children with the best and safest quality health care possible.

Appropriations

Highlights of Federal Appropriations Pryce has secured:

Over $3 million for the construction of a biomedical research facility at OSU
Over $2 million for a Gynecological Cancer Research Center at OSU
Over $1.6 million to evaluate freeze-dried berries for their ability to inhibit cancer development at OSU’s College of Food , Agriculture and Environmental Sciences
$350,000 for the Ohio Supercomputer Center in Columbus to launch a unified research database linking collaborating institutions in Ohio to deliver publicly available pediatric cancer and disease database to the national community.
$2.75 million for the Children’s Oncology Group to advance the pace of clinical trial research for pediatric cancer
This year, Pryce has requested funding for the James Cancer Hospital’s expansion, new equipment for Columbus Children’s Hospital, and continued funding for the freeze-dried berry research.

Other

Pryce led effort to secure PPS-exempt status for the James Cancer Hospital. This has allowed the hospital to receive appropriate reimbursement for the care it provides.
Pryce worked with Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to ensure that Medicare sufficiently reimburses hospitals for providing high-dose interleukin (IL-2) therapy. At the time, this therapy offered the only possibility of long-term survival for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma add metastatic melanoma, conditions that are otherwise fatal. Inadequate reimbursement had forced programs to close down and leave patients without options for treatment. The result: Medicare moved reimbursement for this therapy to a higher paying code enabling hospitals to continue to provide this therapy to patients, giving them hope for survival.
Pryce has co-led efforts to secure federal funding for cancer research by writing letters to the House Budget Committee Chairman and House Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman over the years.
Pryce co-led a letter to President Bush commending him and NCI Director Dr. Andy von Eschenbach to set a goal of 2015 to eliminate the death and suffering caused by cancer.

Awards/Honors

Award	Presenter	Date
Children’s Advocate Award	Ronald McDonald House Charities	3/4/07
Cancer Leadership Award	Friends of Cancer Research	11/15/06
Distinguished Advocacy Award	American Cancer Society	9/22/06
National Distinguished Advocate Award	American Cancer Society	5/27/06
Rays of Hope Award	National Coalition of Cancer Survivors	4/26/06
US Oncology Medal of Honor	US Oncology	11/05
2005 AACI Public Service Award	Award from the American Association of Cancer Institutes	10/05
Humanitarian Health Care Hero Award	National Patient Advocate Foundation	6/23/05
CureSearch Leadership Award	CureSearch	6/05
2004 Congressional Champion Award	CureSearch National Childhood Cancer Foundation	06/17/04
2004 Champion of Change	Komen Foundation	03/09/04
2003 Women’s Health Advocate Award	Komen Foundation	2003
2003 Congressional Award	National Breast Cancer Coalition	2003
2002 Honor Award	Oncology Nursing Society	2002
2002 Public Service Award	American Society of Clinical Oncologists	2002
Leadership Award	National Breast Cancer Coalition	2002