Insurer to Offer Some a High-Tech Cancer Screening Test

By Allison Bell

News May 22, 2024 at 01:32 PM

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Grail's cancer test has a $1,250 retail price. (Image: Galleri)

The Savings Bank Mutual Life Insurance Co. of Massachusetts has added an important benefit for some holders of its bank-owned life insurance: a chance to take Grail's Galleri cancer screening blood test.

The test uses gene sequencing technology to detect traces of about 50 kinds of cancer, including ovarian and pancreatic cancer, at the earliest possible stages.

The current list price of the test is $949.

SBLI is offering access to the Galleri test through a pilot program that will be offered to some of the company's BOLI customers.

SBLI wants to see how access to the test affects customers and will use the results of the pilot program to decide whether to make the test available to more customers, the company said.

Other life insurers that have experimented with offering the Galleri test include John Hancock and MassMutual.

Research: "Liquid biopsy" tests are so new that researchers are still determining how to evaluate their impact.

In February, for example, Grail researchers published a paper on a simulation designed to show what testing outcomes might look like and to shape how cancer screening trials for the Galleri test might work.

Grail and its competitors are also having to persuade skeptics that offering patients access to a multi-cancer early detection test is helpful.

Grail representatives gave an oral presentation in April at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting on a test that will provide Galleri screening for 35,000 people across North America, to see how well the test works and what people do with the test results.

Credit: Galleri

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