Last month, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder released his
official budget. Unfortunately, Governor
Snyder’s budget called for sustained funding for the state’s cancer prevention
and tobacco prevention programs.
Governor Snyder also requested in his budget to use $720 million over 10
years from the tobacco master settlement agreement (MSA) to fix Detroit’s
public school system. ACS CAN does not
support this move. The Governor’s budget
did not call for any increases in state revenue.
Work continues on Michigan’s campaign to raise tobacco
taxes to fund prevention. Our coalition
called the Prevention Michigan Tobacco Free Campaign continues to grow. We now have 24 groups on board including the
major health organizations in the state.
Most recently, Michigan’s Prevention Network signed onto the campaign.
Recent gains with the Governor’s office toward support of a
tobacco tax increase have been significantly delayed due to the water crisis in
Flint. The crisis in Flint is expected
to distract the Governor’s office for the foreseeable future so our focus has
now shifted towards the legislature. Michigan’s State Lead Ambassador, Phil
Moilanen, will meet on March 4 with State Senator Mike Shirkey who is a key
lawmaker in the State Senate. Action alerts will be going out to advocates
throughout March and April leading up to Michigan’s Lobby Day.
Michigan’s annual Lobby Day will take place on April
19. In addition to Lobby Day, we have
added a Leadership Breakfast on the morning of the 19th. This ACS CAN Leadership Breakfast will be a
fundraising event geared towards high profile volunteers and ACS CAN
partners. Dr. Randy Hillard and Vicki
Rakowski, RN have agreed to serve as honorary chairs for this event. Members of the legislative leadership and key
legislators related to health policy have been invited to the breakfast to talk
with those in attendance.
The legislative issues, or asks, have been finalized for
Michigan’s Lobby Day. The day will focus
on two major issues, raising the state’s tobacco taxes and creating oral
chemotherapy parity to increase access to cancer drugs.
At Lobby day, we’ll be asking legislators to increase the
cigarette tax by $1.50 while bringing other tobacco products into parity with
the cigarette tax to increase revenue.
We’ll also ask our legislators to invest $50 million of the new revenue
created by this tax increase into our prevention programs. Michigan’s Tobacco Prevention Program only
receives $1.6 million in state funds annually while the Cancer Prevention
Program only receives $500,000. These
amounts are far below the recommendations set by the Centers for Disease
Control.
In 2004,
Michigan saw its last increase in tobacco taxes with the majority of the
dollars either being absorbed in Medicaid or in education. The funding for prevention
efforts such as tobacco and cancer prevention has dropped off significantly
during that same time. Additionally, other tobacco products like chew and
e-cigarettes have sky rocketed in usage. More and more of our youth are now
trying emerging tobacco products because they’ve been told these products
“aren’t as bad” as cigarettes or chew tobacco.
The other legislative issue, or ask, that we’ll address at
Lobby day will be oral chemotherapy parity, or “fairness.” This issue has
finally started to see some action in the Senate. Senate
Bill 625 has
been introduced and was brought up for
a hearing in the Senate Insurance Committee last month. Senate Bill 625 ensures
that patients facing cancer won’t have to pay a higher price for chemotherapy
taken orally, as opposed to intravenously in a hospital.
Currently, 40 volunteers and 19 staff are registered for
Michigan Lobby Day. Registration will
end on April 5.
This week, market teams were pressed to move Lobby Day
recruitment to the top of their priorities.
The larger markets of Detroit and Grand Rapids have been goaled at 12
volunteers recruited while the smaller markets (Flint, Lansing, Ann Arbor) have
a goal of 6 volunteers.
