In a recent op-ed, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid out a clear, urgent vision for the future of our healthcare system, noting the central role of prevention as one of our most powerful tools in medicine.
As a physician, I could not agree more, but achieving that vision requires a federal apparatus that adequately keeps pace with medical innovation. Right now, when it comes to early cancer detection, bureaucratic inertia is standing in the way of the very prevention the secretary is championing.
Every year, thousands of people die from cancers that could have been prevented if caught early. The tragedy is not a lack of medical innovation but a bottleneck in federal bureaucracy that has delayed patient access, yet could easily have been resolved by multiple administrations.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force determines which preventive services insurers must cover at no cost to patients under current law by recommending certain screening methods. This is critical for adoption, as many studies show that even a small co-pay is a disincentive to completing the recommended screening.
Right now, the task force is failing to act. The panel has been effectively sidelined, postponing meetings and freezing vital updates to national screening guidelines in the process.
While science continues to advance, people’s access is stalled.
Colorectal cancer is a clear example of this dangerous delay. The American Cancer Society reported colorectal cancer as the new leading cancer death for people under 50, with rates rising for adults under 65 and even younger generations. When colorectal cancer is found early, the five-year survival rate is above 90%. Unfortunately, more than 54 million eligible people are not up to date on their recommended screening, despite the availability of screening methods such as colonoscopies and stool-based tests for decades.
Traditional options such as colonoscopies require intensive bowel preparation, sedation, and time off work. At-home stool tests require handling fecal matter, causing many to avoid the process entirely.
To help bridge this gap, laboratory medicine developed a breakthrough: non-invasive, blood-based liquid biopsies that track circulating tumor DNA that can be completed during a routine doctor’s visit — completely removing the friction of preparation.
But the federal government remains stuck in the past. The USPSTF finalized its recommendations years ago, before these blood-based innovations were fully approved. Because the task force has stalled its evaluation process, millions of people cannot access these new options alongside existing tests.
Screening for cancer is ultimately a shared decision between patients and their medical providers, and we have certainly learned over the past decades that one size does not fit all. For example, in Maryland, where I live and work, there are vast differences for someone living in Baltimore and a resident of the more rural communities along the Chesapeake Bay on what screening method best fits their lifestyle.
If we are to follow Kennedy’s mandate to empower doctors and patients, we must offer a broad suite of accessible options to meet patients where they are.
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The current paralysis within our federal health panels is creating a massive gap between current science and everyday patient care. If both the American Cancer Society and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recommend the test in their guidelines, why should it take our federal task force that much more time to update its?
Medical innovation is moving at an incredible pace. It is time for the federal government to update its guidelines to keep pace, give doctors the full tool kit necessary to defeat preventable cancers — and allow access for millions of people so we can save lives.
Dr. Eric Wargotz is a practicing physician, clinical professor emeritus of pathology at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and the 178th president of MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society. The views expressed are his own.