Opinion:

By Charles Sauer

With more than 7 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s – a number expected to double by 2050 – voters are grappling with the emotional and financial costs of caring for aging loved ones.

For Republicans seeking to lead with principled, compassionate, and fiscally responsible health policy, this crisis presents a clear opportunity: be the party that takes seniors’ concerns seriously.

On Alzheimer’s, good policy is good politics. According to new polling, Republicans could go from a 3-point deficit in a congressional race to a 19-point lead over Democrats by stepping up the fight against Alzheimer’s. In fact, 87% of voters say they would credit President Trump with “a major achievement” if he were to support these policies.

To show voters they are serious about Alzheimer’s, Republicans should focus on two strategic buckets: incentivize early detection and remove bureaucratic barriers to treatment and diagnosis. These reforms would not only help American families – they would also deliver major political returns.

Republicans’ first, and perhaps most urgent, reform should be removing Medicare’s barriers to new Alzheimer’s treatments.

Two FDA-approved treatments remove toxic proteins from the brain and slow the disease, giving patients more time to live independently. It is incredibly difficult for a new drug to gain FDA approval, with only 10% of new therapies succeeding. Yet under Biden, instead of honoring the FDA’s scientific judgment, Medicare took an unprecedented step to tie these treatments up in a program that serves no purpose except to increase the administrative burden for doctors. To prescribe the drugs, doctors have to submit patient data to a national registry – an exercise in bureaucracy more fit for countries with socialized medicine, not America.

Smaller practices, especially those in rural areas, are already stretched thin and can’t spare staff time for needless paperwork. It’s a disincentive that is preventing patients from getting care they need. Even worse, private insurers are using Medicare’s program designation to reject claims, deeming these treatments “experimental.” This affects younger people with Alzheimer’s in their 50s and even 40s who tend to have employer-sponsored insurance and would benefit most from early intervention.

Medicare’s duplicative oversight doesn’t protect patients – it punishes them. Republicans should push for Medicare to lift unnecessary barriers to treatment, particularly when the FDA has already determined a treatment’s safety and efficacy. Voters would back them; 92% support changing Medicare rules to make it easier for patients to receive FDA-approved Alzheimer’s treatments.

Second, policymakers should look at ways to incentivize early detection.

With chronic issues like dementia, early detection and prevention is always better – and more cost effective – than treatment. It keeps patients out of the hospital and long-term care facilities, saving taxpayers money.

Proactive measures like the heart-healthy “Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay“ diet alongside sufficient sleep and exercise are proven to preserve cognitive abilities and may help reduce Alzheimer’s risk, but early detection is crucial.

Today, early detection of Alzheimer’s disease is now possible. Advanced blood-based biomarker tests approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can detect levels of disease-causing proteins in the brain with up to 90% accuracy. In the future, they will help to diagnose Alzheimer’s before symptoms are evident. They can open up early detection to the 70 million Americans on Medicare.

This isn’t just responsible policy – it’s popular with voters. About 80% of voters believe early detection and prevention of Alzheimer’s would save taxpayers billions, and 90% support requiring Medicare to cover diagnostic blood tests.

Almost 40% of voters in battleground congressional districts have family members or friends affected by Alzheimer’s. These voters are looking to the party that can make a real difference in the war against Alzheimer’s. Republicans can – and should – be that party. By focusing on prevention, early diagnosis, and CMS reform, they can offer a message of common sense and compassion.

The question isn’t whether we can afford to act on Alzheimer’s. It’s whether we can afford not to.

Charles Sauer is the president of the Market Institute, and the author of Profit Motive: What Drives the Things We Do.

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