Two state lawmakers are pushing for insurance agencies to cover preventive screenings for prostate cancer, the most prevalent cancer among Ohio men in recent years.
Reps. Mark Johnson (R-Chillicothe) and Dontavius Jarrells (D-Columbus) introduced House Bill 550 in May. Under the bill, health benefit plans would have to offer at-risk men who are 40 and older no-cost screenings, including prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests or digital rectal exams (DRE). Whether someone is at-risk is defined by their familial history, according to the bill.
Insurance agencies couldn’t put cost-sharing requirements on the screenings, either.
“With this bill, we project that over the next 13 years, Ohio could prevent hundreds of metastatic cases, detect 10,754 early stage (cases) in men aged 55 to 69, and save nearly $100 million in treatment costs,” Jarrells said at a press conference last Monday.
Among new male cancer cases in 2021, according to Ohio Department of Health data, prostate cancer accounted for 26.1% of them statewide—and 9.3% of deaths. Two-thirds of prostate cancer cases were detected at an early stage.
David Ford was diagnosed a little more than a year ago, after his PSA levels had been rising. Still, before his diagnosis, his physician said he felt it was between a 15% and 20% chance that Ford had prostate cancer.
“My scores, as I said, weren’t that high. But I’ll tell you this: when I went to my first fraternity meeting afterwards,” Ford said, “much to my dismay, when I asked about their PSA scores, every one of them had higher PSA scores than what I had, so diagnosis is key.”
Ford is president of the Alpha Rho Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, a historically Black fraternity. Black men are 1.7 times more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer and 2.1 times more likely to die from it, according to American Cancer Society data.
Another bill, House Bill 24, puts a similar mandate on insurers—and Medicaid—for biomarker testing, which is a laboratory procedure that rules out cancer treatments that won’t work based on a person’s molecular profile.
HB 24 is further along, having already cleared the Ohio House.
Any bills, including HB 550 and HB 24, that do not make it to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk by the time the legislature adjourns in December would need to be reintroduced next year.
