Jackson woman heads to D.C. to push for cancer-research funding

Cancer survivor and Jackson resident Holly Lintner said she feels fortunate to be part of the team heading to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13 to speak with government representatives about the importance of cancer research.

Lintner said this is her third trip to Washington with more than 700 cancer patients, survivors, volunteers and staff from all 50 states and nearly all congressional districts.

The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, or ACS CAN, has an annual leadership summit and lobby day, and advocates will ask Congress to make cancer a national priority.

Lintner said she plans to meet with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and U.S. Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.)

“It takes a while to get things actually through Congress,” Lintner said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Sometimes we work quite a few years on one bill.”

Lintner said this year, the advocates will reinforce what they’ve asked for in the last few years.

Lintner said of particular concern to her is talk of repealing the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare.

“I’m not a huge fan of Obamacare, but I do at least appreciate that it has specific things written in it that would protect people with pre-existing conditions,” Lintner said.

Ensuring quality care is available and affordable to cancer patients will be a focus of their discussion, Lintner said.

Blunt is chairman of the health-care appropriations committee, Lintner said, and “has been instrumental as a cancer survivor himself,” Lintner said.

There have been talks this year about decreasing cancer funding, Lintner said, and that’s a particular concern to her because in the last two years, cancer-research funding has increased.

The group will be asking for an increase of $6 billion for the National Institute of Health, which would include a $300 million increase for the National Cancer Institute, Lintner said.

“We think that’s important,” she said.

The Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act, or PCHETA, also will be on the table for discussion, Lintner said.

“You’re basically dealing with the person instead of just the disease,” she said.

Lintner described the list of doctors attending her care, from a medical oncologist to a plastic surgeon for corrective surgery.

“I had doctors giving specific treatments, but no one was overseeing the person and the family,” she said.

This bill, Senate Bill 693, H.R. 1676, would allow more attention to the patient’s overall wellness and its effects on the family, Lintner said. She said it would not require additional funding.

“It’s a patient-education bill, a medical-professional bill,” Lintner said, “to let them know the importance of having someone coordinating the wellness for family and patient beyond the specific cancer.”

Another bill, Removing Barriers to Colorectal Cancer Screening Act of 2017, (Senate Bill 479, H.R. 1017) would remove an unfortunate barrier to colorectal screenings inadvertently created by the Affordable Care Act.

Lintner said senior citizens receiving Medicare benefits who were going in for a colonoscopy are the ones who encountered a health-care barrier.

If a polyp was found during the screening, the colonoscopy was classified as a diagnostic test, and patients were billed a copay that “could be in the neighborhood of $700,” she said.

“Seniors are disincentivized to have colonoscopies because they’re afraid of the bill, and we’re trying to get that fixed,” Lintner said. “We should be trying for more colonoscopies, not less.”

Lintner said Southeast Missouri is a “hot spot” of colon cancer and breast-cancer diagnoses, which is why it’s so important for screenings and treatment to be readily available.

Lintner said she lost her father to colon cancer when he was 59. Eighteen months before he died, her father-in-law died of kidney cancer, she said.

“It hits me very personally,” Lintner said.

“The federal government is the No. 1 funder of cancer research,” Lintner said, with the American Cancer Society in second place. “That’s why this work is so important. We have to go to the people with the purse strings.

“We’ve been making movement, but we still have to get bills passed.”

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