Medicare Proposes to Pay for Annual Lung Cancer Screenings for Heavy Smokers

Medicare issued a proposal this week to cover annual lung cancer screenings for people with a history of heavy smoking.

The public will be permitted to react to the proposal during a 30-day comment period, HealthDay reports. A final announcement is expected in February.

The proposal would allow coverage for yearly CT scans for people ages 55 to 74 with a smoking history of 30 “pack-years” who are current smokers, or who have quit in the past 15 years. Pack-years are calculated by multiplying the number of packs a person smokes daily by the number of years a person has smoked.

Under the Medicare proposal, radiologists serving Medicare patients would be required to have significant experience in reading and interpreting CT scans for possible lung cancer. Screening would take place at a radiology imaging center that has significant experience or is accredited as an advanced diagnostic imaging center.

Last year a government health panel recommended that heavy smokers ages 55 to 80 receive annual screenings for lung cancer with low-dose CT scans. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force based its recommendation on a large-scale clinical trial that found CT scans could reduce deaths by 16 percent in patients at the highest risk of lung cancer. Experts said the policy could save 20,000 lives a year.

Smokers should get a yearly CT scan if they are between the ages of 55 to 80 and have smoked at least a pack a day for 30 years, even if they quit as long as 15 years ago, the task force said. The scans can detect lung cancer early enough for it to be effectively treated. Health insurers cover procedures strongly recommended by the task force. Under the Affordable Care Act, people who are eligible to receive the scan would have no co-pay. The average cost of the scan is about $170.