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Advocates urge Congress to authorize Alzheimer’s blood-screening pathway as Council weighs policy
Summary
Alzheimer’s Association leaders pressed the NAPA Advisory Council to back the Alzheimer’s Screening and Prevention (ASAP) Act, which would authorize CMS to evaluate and, when evidence supports it, cover blood-based Alzheimer’s screening tests; council members raised workforce and privacy questions.
Rob Egge, chief public policy officer at the Alzheimer’s Association and president of the Alzheimer’s Impact Movement, told the National Alzheimer’s Project Act Advisory Council that blood-based diagnostics and emerging treatments create a timely opportunity for screening.
Egge said Congress should provide administrative authority — not an immediate coverage mandate — for the Department of Health and Human Services to use CMS’s evidence processes to determine when screening coverage would be appropriate. He described the Alzheimer’s Screening and Prevention Act (ASAP Act) as the mechanism to grant that authority, drawing a parallel to recent congressional action on multi-cancer early detection.
“Congress can give the administration the permission structure to evaluate the science and, when the evidence supports it, extend coverage,” Egge said during his presentation. He cited FDA clearances of two blood tests and public polling showing broad interest in access to such diagnostics.
Council members and HHS officials pressed Egge on implementation issues: whether the legislation should explicitly include related dementias, how clinicians will be trained to interpret pre-symptomatic biomarker results, and how long adoption could take. Egge and others noted the precedent of the MCED law for cancer screening pathways and suggested an earliest feasible implementation date in the 2028–2029 range if Congress and HHS act quickly.
Speakers also raised concerns about privacy and discrimination risks tied to biomarker data. Egge recommended executive-order protections for federal employees and broader policy work on biomarker nondiscrimination similar to the path used for genetic information in the 2000s.
The Advisory Council did not take a formal vote on a recommendation at the meeting. Multiple council members signaled interest in considering the ASAP Act via their subcommittees and in urging state-level engagement with federal delegations.
The council asked HHS partners to detail workforce training needs and how care-planning codes (such as the CMS code 99483) might be adapted for earlier-stage, pre-symptomatic care planning if screening becomes available.
