The new seven-figure ad campaign targets – again – Medicare’s pending decision on anti-amyloid drug coverage for Alzheimer’s disease.
On Sunday, UsAgainstAlzheimer’s launched a national initiative worth more than $1 million, including television ads that ran on morning talk shows. The latter’s group opposed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid’s proposed decision to cover only Biogen and Eisais Aduhelm and other potential amyloid-beta drugs for patients in clinical trials. The final decision of CMS will be published on April 11th.
In the first TV commercial for UsAgainstAlzheimer, a real-life Alzheimer’s patient talks about his diagnosis and then says, “There are new treatments that can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. Medicare plans to deny coverage for these new treatments – and that’s wrong.” The second TV commercial will start soon.
Online digital advertising, as well as outdoor advertising for bus stops in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., also work. Both have QR codes that, when scanned, redirect people to the UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Action webpage, where they can sign up to have a letter sent to President Joe Biden and their local members of Congress. Email addresses for the White House, local senators, and representatives are automatically populated based on zip code along with a suggested letter that can be customized by the sender.
On social media, doctors and researchers opposed to Aduhelm’s controversial approval and subsequent coverage of CMS spoke out against the new “We’re against Alzheimer’s” campaign.
“The Alzheimer’s Association and We Against Alzheimer’s are not patient groups. The aducanumab story showed that they are actually being paid by lobbying groups. Lobbying for a clinically ineffective drug with potentially fatal side effects shows how little they care about Alzheimer’s patients,” wrote Robert Howard, professor and aging psychiatrist at UCL. message in response to Reuters coverage of the campaign.
However, UsAgainstAlzeheimer founder George Vradenburg disputed this, saying they were not acting on behalf of the financiers.
“We have a huge bias – patient bias,” he said. “Whoever funds us, the individuals who fund us, the companies who fund us, we are telling the truth about patients.”
He pointed to his own study of a group of patients and caregivers published on Monday. It asked if the new Alzheimer’s drugs were approved and “very likely to have an effect, while research is still ongoing to make sure of this effect”, whether they would take them “even if they can have serious side effects?
Three-quarters said they would take it. “My disease is fatal,” said one respondent living with Alzheimer’s. – What could be worse than this?
The new UsAgainstAlzheimer campaign is the latest in a series of statements, events and marketing efforts by Alzheimer’s advocacy groups and organizations that have emerged since CMS announced its proposed solution in January. The CMS’s 30-day open comment window resulted in almost 10,000 responses both for and against the coverage.
Immediately following the January decision, the Alzheimer’s Association launched a paid social media campaign that accused Medicare of “aggravating health inequities” and called the agency’s decision “simply unacceptable.” The association called on the people to lobby Congress and the CMS to change course in its final decision, supported by a host of other influencers including the PhRMA, BIO and AARP.
On Tuesday, the Aging Research Alliance plans to hold a rally outside the Department of Health and Human Services “to protest the Medicare coverage project for FDA-approved treatments for Alzheimer’s.” Speakers will include people living with Alzheimer’s disease, as well as their families, Congressional representatives, and chronic disease advocacy groups.
Global Alzheimer’s Platform President John Dwyer, another outspoken critic of the CMS proposal, plans to speak out about his concern that “the proposal would delay the selection of treatment options by at least another 10 years and pose a threat to health equity in clinical trials” .
The Alzheimer’s Association said in an email to Endpoints News that it is not participating in the DC rally of the Alliance for Aging and is not working with the UsAgainstAlzheimer campaign. The spokesperson said the group was clear on its position on the draft CMS decision and added that it “continues to use every means of communication to ensure that affected individuals, the general public and the administration truly understand the implications of this draft decision.”
Alzheimer’s groups are trying to distance themselves from Biogen and Eisai’s approved Aduhelm. They point to the fact that CMS lumped all anti-amyloid drugs together as a problem for future authorizations. Eli Lilly and Roche, along with another Biogen candidate, are advancing research into the same class of anti-amyloid drugs.
Eli Lilly and Roche joined the chorus of CMS responses with letters to CMS asking them to reverse their decision limiting Aduhelm coverage to patients in clinical trials.