Senators push Medicare for a PET scan pay bump

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Exclusive: Senators ask Medicare for a pay bump for drugs used with PET scans

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is leading a bipartisan group of senators to ask Medicare officials to bump payment for drugs paired with diagnostic scans that are used for, among other things, assessing patients’ eligibility for a new class of Alzheimer’s drugs, my co-author Rachel Cohrs Zhang reports.

Medicare last year relaxed restrictions that limited Medicare patients to one PET scan in their lifetimes, and only in the context of a clinical trial. Now, the group of 15 senators including Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.), Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Maggie Hasssan (D-N.H.), is asking Medicare to pay for the drugs used with the scans separately, instead of having them bundled in with other services.

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