When a Medicare patient receives a diagnosis, she shouldn’t be told that the most effective FDA-approved treatment might be covered by Medicare — in six years . Yet this is the reality confronting patients nationwide, creating a bureaucratic barrier between seniors and lifesaving medical innovation.

This troubling delay between FDA approval and Medicare coverage represents a crisis hiding in plain sight. While breakthrough medical technologies reduce hospital stays by 38% and cut deaths from breast cancer by 43% , Medicare patients — who often need these innovations most urgently — wait nearly six years to access them after regulatory approval.

That’s why dozens of state life sciences associations from coast to coast recently joined together to urge the Centers for Medicare and Med

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