Cynthia Rice is Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Policy for JDRF. She is responsible for JDRF’s advocacy to Congress, the executive branch, regulatory agencies, and health plans to accelerate therapies to cure, treat, and prevent type 1 diabetes.

JDRF is the leading global organization funding type 1 diabetes research. Driven by passionate, grassroots volunteers connected to children, adolescents, and adults with the disease, JDRF’s goal is to progressively remove the impact of T1D from people’s lives until we achieve a world without T1D.

Ms. Rice joined JDRF, then known as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, in 2005 and led a cross-departmental staff team that developed the Artificial Pancreas Project. She was promoted to Vice President, Government Relations in 2009 and to her current role in 2013.
The Issue and What’s Being Done

Thousands of people are benefiting daily from tighter glucose control reached with the help of a continuous glucose monitor. The use of CGM technologies is recommended by national diabetes clinical guidelines and covered by nearly all private health plans. To date, Medicare does not cover CGM devices, regardless of the wide coverage by private health plans and the evidence of clinical benefit, leaving seniors with diabetes vulnerable. It’s time for Medicare to cover CGMs.

JDRF has been working closely with other interested stakeholders for more than a year to encourage Medicare to cover CGM devices, and has made Medicare coverage of CGM devices one of their top Advocacy priorities. While JDRF continues to work with Medicare in hopes of resolving this issue quickly, they ask that you join them in building support within Congress for Medicare coverage of CGMs. To learn more, read their coalition fact sheet.

Category: Nonprofits & Activism
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