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# Senators Ask CMS Not to Hurt Alzheimers Drug Access, Research
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/senators-ask-cms-not-to-hurt-alzheimers-drug-access-research/
- Published: 2022-03-03T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T17:35:10.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5151284

Sens. **Susan Collins** (R-ME) and **Shelley Capito** (R-WV) are asking the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to ensure that its national coverage determination on Biogen’s Aduhelm (aducanumab) and other monoclonal antibody Alzheimer’s drugs does not restrict access and impede research into the disease. In a [statement](https://www.collins.senate.gov/newsroom/collins-capito-urge-cms-to-ensure-alzheimers-coverage-decision-does-not-restrict-access-impede-research?ref=fdaweb.com) (includes link to letter to CMS), the senators say CMS had a wide range of coverage decisions it could make and chose “a particularly burdensome and restrictive approach that could sharply curtail access not just to one approved product, but to an entire class of potential future products still in the development pipeline It is highly unusual, if not precedent-setting, for CMS to attempt to evaluate a drug’s clinical benefit. Congress has reserved this task for FDA, which said that Aduhelm’s effect on cognition was nough to merit accelerated approval pending confirmation of the clinical benefit.”

The senators say the CMS coverage decision would restrict access to the entire class of therapies to only those patients who can participate in a CMS-approved clinical trial or those who can afford to pay out-of-pocket.