Cancer costs put treatments out of reach for many

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43293682/ns/health-cancer/

By Debra Sherman
Reuters
updated 6/6/2011 12:08:44 PM ET 2011-06-06T16:08:44


CHICAGO — The skyrocketing cost of new cancer treatments is putting advances in fighting the deadly disease out of reach for a growing number of Americans.

Cancer patients are abandoning medical care because the costs are simply too high and medical bills -- even among the insured -- are unmanageable, studies show.

"There's a growing awareness that the cost of cancer treatment is unsustainable," said Dr. Lee Schwartzberg, an oncologist who did a study examining the factors that contributed to patients quitting their oral cancer drugs.

Cancer is one of the most costly diseases to treat, largely because many patients are treated over a long term, often with expensive new drugs that are complicated to produce and not available in generic form. As insurance companies cut all benefits, reimbursements on cancer treatments have also declined

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Patients with co-payments of more than $500 were four times more likely to abandon treatment than those with co-payments of $100 or less, Schwartzberg said. Claims with the highest co-payments had a 25 percent abandonment rate, compared with 6 percent for co-payments of less than $100.

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The thing that surprised him most, Zafar said, was how much the insured struggled with their medical bills.

"Ninety-nine percent of the patients in our study were insured and 83 percent said they had prescription coverage. People still couldn't afford groceries and were spending life savings on cancer care," Zafar said.

Even with health insurance, out-of-pocket expenses averaged $712 per month for co-payments for doctor visits, prescription drugs, lost wages, travel to appointments and other expenses.

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Dr. Scott Ramsey authored a study that examined a cancer diagnosis as a risk for personal bankruptcy. Using cancer registries and bankruptcy records in Washington state, he found that a diagnosis of lung cancer had the highest risk of bankruptcy -- 8 percent versus 0.3 percent in the general population in the same geographic area.

"We looked at (bankruptcy) 1, 3 and 5 years after a diagnosis and the rate ranged from two to six times higher," he said.

Dr. Ronald Ennis, a radiation oncologist at St. Luke's-Roosevelt and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, studied the impact a weak economy has on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. He said he found exactly what he had expected: There was a dramatic decline in cancer treatment during times of high unemployment.

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