Government officials recently approved the Affordable Care Act, which requires new health insurance plans to remove costs that cover preventative services, including screenings for colon cancer. Health organizations, including the American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE), hope ridding patients of these expenses will lead to more screenings and lower the mortality rate of this type of cancer.

Patients who get tested for this disease often undergo a colonoscopy, a diagnostic method that can find the earliest signs of colon cancer. If polyps are found during the screening, doctors can also remove them and help patients avoid an additional procedure.

However, some insurance companies may be able to apply costs to this preventative service if polyps are discovered and removed. If these plans don’t cover expenses associated with a colonoscopy procedure, health experts fear that less people will get screened for colon cancer and the mortality rate will increase.

M. Brian Fennerty, president of the ASGE, stated that “we call upon health plans and insurers to fully eliminate the cost burden of colonoscopy colorectal cancer screening by waiving cost-sharing for the screening portion of colonoscopies in the event that they turn therapeutic and a polyp is removed.”

In 2009, an estimated 106,100 new cases of colon cancer were diagnosed in the United States, which included approximately 54,090 women and 52,010 men, the American Cancer Society (ACS) reports.