CMS plans to cover a specific kind of immunotherapy for cancer patients.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services revealed that it intends to allow Medicare to pay for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, in which oncologists use a patient’s own immune system to attack a tumor.
The determination would require that Medicare cover CAR T-cell treatments across the country when it is offered in a registry or clinical study approved by the agency. CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement that covering such therapies will allow CMS to gain deeper insight on how well it works for Medicare beneficiaries.