After three years of advocacy, Solve M.E. scored a concrete legislative victory with the passage of The Clinical Treatment Act. This covers clinical trial costs for qualifying 74.8M Medicaid participants — including ME/CFS patients — and provides resources for ME/CFS clinical trials.
Lowering the costs and barriers for participation in clinical trials is a key priority for Solve M.E. For the past three years, Solve M.E. has endorsed and advocated for the passage of H.R. 913, The Clinical Treatment Act. Initially introduced in 2019 by Representatives Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM-03) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL-12), this new law guarantees coverage of the routine care costs of clinical trial participation (like lab tests or doctor visits) for Medicaid enrollees.
This important policy change will reduce the overall cost of ME/CFS clinical trials and we hope this new law will facilitate more ME/CFS clinical trials. With these new laws in place, ME/CFS clinical trials will have additional resources and be less expensive to execute. Most importantly, these provisions will help address racial and income disparities in clinical trial participants.
The whirlwind end-of-year Fiscal Year 2021 legislative package brought us big wins for ME/CFS. In that time, a quiet revolution in participation and funding in clinical trials took place, and now we’re starting to see results!
Thanks to people like you, we’ve made great strides. But there is so much more to do! I hope you’ll consider investing in our advocacy efforts today. With your support, we can continue to educate our representatives and fight for our communities in the halls of power.
With gratitude,
Emily Taylor
Director of Advocacy and Community Relations
Solve M.E.
