Patient Advocates and Health Care Provider Groups Applaud Filing of the ‘Safe Step Act’ in U.S. House and Senate

Legislation puts common sense guidelines around insurance industry practice of “step therapy” WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 13, 2023 Today, patient and health care provider groups from across the country applauded the reintroduction of legislation aimed at putting reasonable parameters around the insurance industry protocol known as “step therapy” or “fail first”. The bill (S.652) is…

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California Patient Urges Lawmakers to Bring Commonsense Guardrails to Step Therapy

  California native Jennifer Pellegrin shares her story on the importance of getting the treatment you need, when you need it. By Jenn Pellegrin Editor’s note: Jennifer Pellegrin is a National Psoriasis Foundation volunteer advocate who is sharing her experience, in her own words, on how detrimental step therapy was to her treatment journey, and why state…

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Lessons from COVID-19: Step Therapy Should Not Be a Barrier to Patient Access

By Taruja Karmarkar, Patrick Stone, Jennifer Graff The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated Americans’ challenges in accessing much-needed and effective care. One such hurdle, step therapy, requires patients to try a clinically recognized, lower cost first-line therapy before reimbursement for an alternative therapy prescribed by the physician and can delay access to care. Pre-pandemic, experts expressed…

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Patient and Provider Groups Push for Step Therapy Protections in new MA Policy

On October first, 40 national patient and provider organizations sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in response to the recent announcement that Medicare Advantage plans can require step therapy for physician-administered drugs starting in 2019. In the letter, the organizations urged HHS to implement a robust exceptions process for…

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