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... RESEARCH AND PREVENTION PROGRAMS With negotiations over the debt limit and deficit preoccupying Congressional leaders and the White House, ACS CAN wrote to the president and the bipartisan leadership of the House and Senate today asking that a full scale effort against cancer be made a top priority as negotiations continue. Read the letter and ... first time since the Medicare program was created in 1965, Medicare now covers an annual wellness visit with a participating doctor, also at no cost.   CMS has also launched an outreach and education campaign -- Share the News, Share the Health -- to promote the benefits throughout the ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- July 16, 2007 -- The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network SM (ACS CAN) today sent a letter to the members of the Senate Finance Committee urging approval of a 61 cents per pack increase in the federal cigarette excise tax and a comparable increase for other tobacco products. The tax increase is ...

... are marking the American Cancer Society's 47 th annual Great American Smokeout tomorrow by calling on elected officials to protect the health of all Vermont residents by implementing strong tobacco control legislation. Advocates note that the need is particularly strong in Vermont, where ... earnings. Unsurprisingly, states with weaker tobacco control policies experienced significantly higher deaths.  In Vermont, nearly one third of cancer deaths can be attributed to smoking, and the state incurs an average of $404 million in health care costs directly caused by smoking every year. "Nearly ...

In the States   As we previously noted in this space, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has tasked each state with defining an essential health benefits (EHB) package that will cover 10 broad ... market.  If a state fails to select a plan by September 30, the EHB benchmark defaults to the largest small-group plan in the state.   ACS CAN and several other consumer groups have created a survey tool to identify what benefits are actually covered in some of the potential state ... list, but rather a sampling of the most commonly used services across the 10 EHB categories HHS mandates. Also, we are not asking for any cost-sharing information such as co-insurance, co-pays and deductibles as those issues will be addressed through separate HHS regulations.   The ...