2024 Tennessee Legislative Priorities

Victory in the fight against cancer requires bold new public policies that promote cancer prevention, early detection of cancer, and expand access to quality, affordable health care. Lawmakers make many decisions that impact the lives of Tennesseans impacted by cancer and their leadership is vital to defeating this disease. In 2024 the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) will work with the Tennessee General Assembly on legislative and regulatory efforts that provide affordable, adequate access to health insurance including TennCare, ensure adequate funding for lifesaving cancer screening and prevention programs, and enact prevention policies to protect kids from tobacco products and help support those who are trying to quit. We will be making the following fact-based policies a priority and ask for your support:

Ensuring Access to Quality Care

• Medicaid Expansion: ACS CAN will advocate for low-income individuals and families to have access to health care coverage through TennCare. We will support policies that preserve and protect access to TennCare and will advocate for an expansion of the program, to provide parents and adults earning less than 138% of the federal poverty level access to comprehensive, affordable health insurance coverage.

• Access to Biomarker Testing: ACS CAN will advocate for improved coverage of comprehensive biomarker testing. Progress in improving cancer outcomes increasingly involves the use of precision medicine, which uses information about a person’s own genes or proteins to better diagnose and treat diseases like cancer. Biomarker testing is an important step to accessing precision medicine which includes targeted therapies that can lead to improved survivorship and better quality of life for cancer patients, but insurance coverage for biomarker testing is failing to keep pace with innovations and advancements in treatment.
Cancer Prevention and Early Detection

• Breast and Cervical Cancer: ACS CAN will advocate to maintain funding for Tennessee Breast and Cervical Screening Program, the state breast and cervical cancer screening program for low-income uninsured and underinsured women administered by the Tennessee Department of Health.

• Colorectal Cancer: ACS CAN will work to establish funding for colorectal cancer screening, treatment, and patient navigation programs. Additionally, ACS CAN will work to ensure health plans cover colorectal cancer screening beginning at age 45 in accordance with updated American Cancer Society and United States Preventive Services Task Force guidelines and ensure patients are not charged for colonoscopies that follow a positive stool-based test.

• Lung Cancer: ACS CAN advocates for all insurance plans, including traditional Medicaid, to provide a comprehensive benefit for lung cancer screening including all follow-up testing according to recommended guidelines, without enrollee cost sharing or other barriers.

Reducing the Toll of Tobacco

• Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Funding: ACS CAN will work to increase funding for fact-based, statewide tobacco prevention and cessation programs to $13 million. This is especially important as Tennessee has the third highest adult smoking rate in the country and ranks third in smoking attributable cancer deaths. Increasing funding to $13 million will allow more individuals to quit smoking and prevent children from ever starting a lifetime of addiction to tobacco.

• Access to Tobacco Cessation: ACS CAN will advocate for all insurance plans, including the state Medicaid program, to provide a comprehensive cessation benefit that covers individual, group, and telephone counseling and all FDA-approved tobacco cessation medications without cost-sharing or other barriers to accessing care.