By: Maria-Paula

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden requested Congress $2.8 billion for his cancer moonshot, a project he announced last year as he committed to making progress on cancer and announced necessitating swift and committed action to Alzheimer’s disease.
Bidens Administration announced, this moonshot’s theme as “To improve the U.S. government’s capabilities to speed research that can improve human health, to improve our ability to prevent, detect, and treat a range of diseases including cancer, infectious diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, and many others.”
On the other hand, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, CMS, made decision to block Medicare coverage of Food & Drug Administration, FDA, approved medications for Alzheimer’s disease a decision that prevent the would-be beneficiaries from receiving the medication in case of their doctor’s prescription.
CMC is an agency within the US Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, that administers the nation’s major healthcare programs. The conflicting controversy between Biden and CMS therefore pose a question on the government’s commitment to a better and safe environment for Alzheimer’s disease patients and other degenerating conditions.
“The estimated 6.5 million Alzheimer’s patients deserve an answer to the question: How can the President improve on treating diseases like Alzheimer’s when his own Administration puts forth policies that deny access to care?” read a statement.
Despite CMS denying the coverage of Leqembi medicine, a drug used to manage Alzheimer’s disease, and saying it needed more data to evaluate how the treatment works in the ‘real world’, the FDA and the Veterans Health Administration, VHA, don’t require that.
The Alzheimer’s community has a date on July 6, when the FDA is expected to give a traditional approval to the Leqembi medicine. Will Biden help change the mind of CMS for the traditional approval?
Without doubt, the announcement from the VHA is great news for 168,000 veterans. But that still leaves more than one million Americans with Alzheimer’s without a therapy, or hope.
CMS still has a chance to do the right thing. And if President Biden means what he says about prioritizing an Alzheimer’s moonshot, he can make a life-changing difference for millions of Americans.
The Global Alzheimer’s Platform Foundation (GAP) under John Dwyer its president is a patient-centric, non-profit organization dedicated to speeding the delivery of innovative therapies to those living with Alzheimer’s by reducing the time and cost of Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials.