Medicare is failing people with Alzheimer's and their families by essentially declining to provide diagnostics and FDA-approved treatments.  We are calling for Medicare to end its discrimination against people with Alzheimer's and other cognitive illnesses.  

Medicare does not cover innovations in diagnosing Alzheimer's such as PET scans, with one narrow exception. As a result, patients lose precious time in getting a diagnosis that can support them in getting the appropriate treatment, the choice to live life on their own terms, and the ability to choose what is best for them.  

Over the last 10 years, the FDA has approved the use of several types of these tests to help diagnose (or rule out) Alzheimer’s, but CMS has not extended Medicare coverage to use the available technology for earlier and more accurate diagnosis, leaving many without a definitive confirmation of their condition.  

Since the FDA approved the first new treatment for Alzheimer’s in decades, CMS has taken unprecedented steps to limit coverage for it and all similar drugs.  CMS has created a heinous regulatory environment for an entire class of potential new treatments when it should be conducting stand-alone reviews of every new treatment to accurately understand its effectiveness.  

Additionally, the requirement to generate additional evidence of the efficacy of these new drugs to satisfy the CMS decision will draw resources and opportunities away from the development of additional new treatments, and ultimately delay access for millions of people with Alzheimer’s who could benefit.  

CMS further stigmatized people with Alzheimer's by partially blaming the cost of new Alzheimer's treatments for the largest yearly dollar-amount rate hike ever for Medicare for Part B premiums. CMS publicly called out the cost of care for Alzheimer's, marking the first time the agency pointed to a specific disease or chronic condition, as the rationale for raising premiums. This was an unprecedented move for the agency, which has never singled out other expensive treatments for cancer, organ transplants, or vision loss.  

Finally, Medicare’s unfair treatment of people with Alzheimer's is combined with ongoing, systemic inequities in Alzheimer’s care for minority groups, further disadvantaging vulnerable patients.  The discriminatory CMS decision on coverage for diagnostic tools and treatments have kept these innovations out of the hands of lower-income communities and those without access to major medical institutions where clinical trials are conducted.  

Medicare must stop practices and policies that discriminate against people living with Alzheimer’s and other cognitive diseases.