An Alabama senator is reviving a bill for the 2026 legislative session that would require health insurance companies to cover prostate cancer screenings for all high-risk patients.
SB 19, sponsored by State Sen. Steve Livingston, R-Scottsboro, would allow all men over 50 and high risk men over 40 to be screened for prostate cancer without any cost-sharing obligations.
Livingston said in an interview earlier this month that a constituent brought the issue to him in the middle of the 2024 session.
“It was late in the session, so I really didn’t expect it to go anywhere that year,” Livingston said. “Then last year, we got down to the wire with it. We were in a position to go and just ran out of time.”
The American Cancer Society estimates that 5,440 men in Alabama will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year. It also estimates that 10% of those men will die from the disease.