Costs Compromise Care for Cancer Survivors
Reported February 05, 2009
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — The high cost of medical care is causing many cancer survivors to go without routine medical services.
According to a report based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than a million people are doing without these services, and while the problem is most acute among those without health insurance, even the insured are opting not to receive the care they need due to high out-of-pocket expenses.
The study of more than 6,600 adult cancer survivors found cost concerns were leading about 8 percent to forego general medical care and about 11 percent to forego dental care. Nearly 10 percent were also declining needed prescriptions, and almost 3 percent reported going without necessary mental health services.
Hispanics and African Americans in the study were twice as likely to go without these necessary services as whites, and the differences held true even after the findings were adjusted to take education, insurance coverage, and other medical problems into account.
“These survivors are either going without, or significantly delaying, dental care, general medical care, mental health care or prescription drugs,” Kathryn Weaver, Ph.D., a cancer prevention fellow at the National Cancer Institute, was quoted as saying. “Efforts to expand insurance coverage might go some way toward addressing these problems, but absent that, clinicians need to be more aware that their patients are not getting these services and work to try to connect them to charity or low-cost care.”
SOURCE: Presented at the American Association for Cancer Research conference on the Science of Health Care Disparities, February 4, 2009