Health insurance doesn’t necessarily protect patients from medical debt: A survey from the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network released Thursday found that nearly all cancer patients burdened with debt also had insurance coverage .
The findings underscore the exorbitant cost of cancer care in the United States.
The findings were based on responses to a survey of nearly 1,300 cancer patients and survivors from March 18 to April 14.
Overall, 47% of patients reported having medical debt related to their cancer treatment, with half of them having debt greater than $5,000. More than two-thirds have been in debt for more than a year; about a third carried the debt for more than three years.
Almost all – 98% – had health insurance at the time the debt was incurred.
“While it’s great that 98 percent have some form of coverage, it tells us that it’s clearly not enough,” said Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society. “Cancer care is truly devastating to people’s financial situations. »
Medical debt can have serious health consequences, Knudsen said. Patients are more likely to be late on recommended cancer screenings or to skip or delay their medications. They may also go without essentials such as food, clothing and transportation.
It can also hurt a person’s credit score, making it difficult to get a loan or an apartment. That prompted the nation’s largest credit bureaus — Equifax, TransUnion and Experia — in 2022 to change how medical debt is reported to the agencies. The Biden administration has since announced other proposals aimed at protecting credit scores.
The survey also found that Black and Hispanic patients with medical debt were about twice as likely as white respondents to report being denied care because of their debt.
“It’s very concerning,” Knudsen said. “Black people across the country are increasingly likely to owe more and more debt for longer. »
Financial pressure often affects young people, with almost three-quarters of cancer patients aged 35 to 44 having medical debt.
“We were really appalled to see that,” Knudsen said. “This tension has been shown to persist throughout their lives, impacting their choices, their ability to accept employment and their choice to have the life they would like.”
Dr. Fumiko Chino, a radiation oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, is no stranger to the high cost of cancer care.
In 2007, her husband, Andrew, died from a rare form of endocrine cancer. Her insurance, which had a lifetime limit of $500,000, was insufficient to cover the full cost of her cancer treatments, and after her death, debt collectors turned to her to demand payments. It wasn’t until a decade later that Chino learned she wasn’t responsible for the debt.
“It’s a pervasive problem. We really have an affordability gap,” Chino said. “We’re talking about hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of patients every year who are really faced with excruciating decisions between their lives and their savings.”
Arthur Caplan, chief of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, noted that many people with medical debt were on so-called high-deductible health plans, which likely contributed to the financial burden.
High-deductible plans generally have lower monthly premiums, but require the patient to pay significantly more out of pocket before coverage kicks in.
“Even if people are insured, sometimes they don’t have very good insurance,” he said.
Still, the high cost of cancer care can also cause financial hardship for people with good health insurance, he added.
“These cancer treatments can go on and on,” he said. “They can also be very expensive for diagnostic testing, genetic testing, and pretty soon you say, ‘Well, I have a million dollar insurance policy and it’s gone.'”
Knudsen said the findings highlight the importance of detecting cancers in people earlier.
“We know that not only are outcomes better when cancers are detected earlier, but there is also a significant reduction in costs,” she said.
News Source : www.nbcnews.com
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