...Thank you, Mike, and thank you all for joining us today. I want to first begin by expressing our strong disagreement with CMS' draft National Coverage Determination for antibodies directed against amyloids. If finalized in its current form, we believe this NCD will deny nearly all Medicare beneficiaries the right to access ADUHELM, the first FDA-approved treatment for Alzheimer's disease since 2003. As proposed, this NCD will not only block access to ADUHELM but it will also block access to future amyloid therapies for the indefinite future. Providing coverage only for participants in a randomized clinical trial will mean that only patients in the active trial arm will receive therapy, with the likely results that the number of patients on therapy for the foreseeable future will only be in hundreds, when we know Alzheimer's disease affects millions of patients. This proposal would likely promote inequality as only individuals who live close to, or can travel to, participating medical centers...
