Medicare Proposes Paying for Advanced Cancer Screening Tests

The Medicare agency would pay for advanced genetic screening tests that are critical to personalized treatments known as precision medicine, under a proposal released Oct. 29.

The proposed decision memo would extend Medicare coverage of next-generation sequencing tests to certain types of ovarian and breast cancer that may be caused by hereditary factors, Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in a series of tweets.

Next-generation sequencing can screen millions of DNA changes in a single test, unlike traditional diagnostics that link one test to one disease. These powerful genomic tests are the linchpin to ...