Study: Almost half of new cancer patients lose their entire life savings

[EarthFirst]

According to a new study published in the American Journal of Medicine, 42% of new cancer patients lose all of their life savings in two years because of treatment. The average amount a cancer patient lost was $92,098.

After tracking 9.5 million cancer patients from 2000 to 2012, researchers also learned that 62% of all cancer patients are in debt because of their treatment, and 55% of them owe at least $10,000.

In addition, 40% to 85% of all cancer patients have to quit working while undergoing treatment, which creates a financial burden that can last for six months or longer.

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(18)30509-6/fulltext

This is unacceptable!

[democratisphere]

1. Thanks to the American Criminal Enterprise Healthcare System.

They are here to bleed US dry!

[Mike 03]

2. A little bit from the abstract:

Methods
This longitudinal study used the Health and Retirement Study from 1998–2014. Persons ?50 years with newly-diagnosed malignancies were included, excluding minor skin cancers. Multivariable generalized linear models assessed changes in net worth and debt (consumer, mortgage, home equity) at 2 and 4 years after diagnosis (year+2, year+4), controlling for demographic and clinically-related variables, cancer-specific attributes, economic factors, and mortality. A 2-year period before cancer diagnosis served as a historical control.

Results
Across 9.5 million estimated new diagnoses of cancer from 2000–2012, individuals averaged 68.6±9.4 years with slight majorities being married (54.7%), not retired (51.1%), and Medicare beneficiaries (56.6%). At year+2, 42.4% depleted their entire life's assets, with higher adjusted odds associated with worsening cancer, requirement of continued treatment, demographic and socioeconomic factors (ie, female, Medicaid, uninsured, retired, increasing age, income, and household size), and clinical characteristics (ie, current smoker, worse self-reported health, hypertension, diabetes, lung disease) (P<.05); average losses were $92,098. At year+4, financial insolvency extended to 38.2%, with several consistent socioeconomic, cancer-related, and clinical characteristics remaining significant predictors of complete asset depletion.

My god.

[exboyfil]

3. My dad died soon enough that

they only went through 60% of their 401(k). As a cherry on top they threw my mom off my dad's health insurance as soon as died. She then got a crappy policy that didn't pay much for her own issues until she qualified for Medicare.

Acquiring assets, under our current system, is for suckers.

[pnwmom]

11. Acquiring assets is a good idea -- as long as you have excellent health insurance.

Thanks to the ACA, medical bankruptcies are sharply down.

[central scrutinizer]

13. Yes!

Without the ACÁ, I would be bankrupt and homeless. Ms. CS died from pancreatic cancer after 11 months. We had thousands in deductibles and copay to pay out of our savings but we weren't wiped out.

[pnwmom]

19. I'm so sorry about your loss, CS.

But at least you weren't wiped out financially. Glad the ACA helped with that.

[former9thward]

40. The American Journal of Public Health (March 2019) disagrees with you.

Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304901?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=a5697b7e-8ffc-4373-b9d2-3eb745d9debb&=&

“Despite gains in coverage and access to care from the ACA, our findings suggest that it did not change the proportion of bankruptcies with medical causes,” an article on the study published in the American Journal of Public Health states.

The number of debtors who cited medical issues as a contributing reason for their bankruptcy actually increased slightly after the law’s implementation — 67.5 percent in the three years following the law’s adoption versus 65.5 percent prior.

The culprit for the lack of improvement was inadequate health-care insurance, according to a co-author of the research, Dr. David U. Himmelstein, a distinguished professor at Hunter College and founder of advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program.

“Unless you’re Jeff Bezos, people don’t have very good alternatives, because the insurance that is available and affordable to people, or that most people’s employers provide them, is not adequate protection if you’re sick,” Himmelstein said.

[pnwmom]

41. Actually, it doesn't. It says that the "culprit fo the lack of improvement was inadequate

health insurance." And I said that acquiring assets was a good idea if you had excellent health insurance.

Also, there is disagreement among researchers on how to determine what is a medical bankruptcy. Consumer reports did a survey of 2000 people who had experienced medical bankruptcies and found that the rate was substantially down since the ACA.

https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-obamacare-bankruptcy-20170509-story.html#:~:targetText=A%20series%20of%20surveys%20by,of%20ACA%2Drelated%20insurance%20coverage.&targetText=There%2C%20the%20rate%20of%20medical,was%203%25%20to%209%25.

That’s the finding of an analysis of bankruptcy court data and the results of a questionnaire of 2,000 consumers just published by Consumer Reports.

Personal bankruptcy filings fell from more than 1.5 million in 2010 to 770,846 last year. The publication acknowledges that several factors have contributed to the decline, particularly 2005 changes in bankruptcy law that made personal bankruptcy harder and more costly to file and the general improvement in the economy since 2008. But its experts “almost all agreed that expanded health coverage played a major role in the marked, recent decline.”

The Consumer Reports study is a new data point in a long-running debate about the impact of medical costs on U.S. households and the effect of bringing insurance coverage to millions more Americans. The issue has become highly politicized, in part because healthcare costs affect households in myriad ways and defining “medical bankruptcy” is difficult.

[OhZone]

4. People have savings?

[Skittles]

7. yes

people who don't get sick and save for decades can actually have savings

[nilram]

15. Yes, Tens and Tens of dollars

But its early in the month.

[OhZone]

20. Ha!

That's about it!

[ck4829]

23. Wow!

[Turbineguy]

5. That means the system is only about half efficient.

The system is supposed to take all of everybody's money and give it to the starving billionaires.

[ck4829]

24. Pretty much

[Hermit-The-Prog]

32. don't worry, the state will take the rest and save the billionaires

[SWBTATTReg]

6. This is wrong wrong wrong. At the worst time of these peoples' lives having to worry about...

crap like their savings being drained. A shame and awful legacy in this country where we supposedly have the best medical care available in the world. Yeah, right.

When I read this post, I recalled the one legislator that held up a sign that described the republican health plan, basically to just get sick and die. I forget who it was but it made a big impact.

[onecaliberal]

8. But but they like their insurance....

[Staph]

9. I am so lucky!

I'm in my seventh year of cancer treatment (second recurrence) and my insurance has covered me well.

[Fritz Walter]

18. Yeah. Me too! (almost)

In my case, it's been two weeks since I got the last treatment. Still, fingers crossed.

If I had to depend on the shitty health insurance I had a year ago, my 40+ years of retirement savings would be wiped out. I'd be desperately pushing a stolen shopping cart through alleys to scrape up a few pennies to cover my mortgage, co-pays, not to mention other recurrent liabilities and expenses.

Now, I'm on Medicare. If the RepubliCONs want to dial back the benefits to current or future beneficiaries (I hate their term "recipients", because it subltly implies that we haven't been paying into this system over the past 40+ years). they should do a MUCH BETTER job explaining this to their base.

As in,Town Hall meetings. Open to the public, i.e their voters.

Especially here in Florida! (I'm looking at you, John "Barney Fife" Rutherford! The so-called representative for my seriously-gerrimandered District 4) Support Donna Deegan.

in an election year, I'd say Bring It!. Previously, fucking with Medicare was a third-rail issue during elections: if you go there, you'll be electrocuted (finished!). Now? Not so much. Anything wrong with this picture?

We need to get out the vote. More so than ever before!!

[pnwmom]

10. This was before Obamacare, which brought the rate of bankruptcies sharply down,

by removing annual and lifetime limits, adding essential benefits, and prohibiting the sale of junk policies.

I hope this study today would get better results.

https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-obamacare-bankruptcy-20170509-story.html#:~:targetText=A%20series%20of%20surveys%20by,of%20ACA%2Drelated%20insurance%20coverage.&targetText=There%2C%20the%20rate%20of%20medical,was%203%25%20to%209%25.

Here’s another benefit of the Affordable Care Act you may not have read much about, but is profoundly threatened by the Republican repeal effort: It has reduced the tide of healthcare-related personal bankruptcies.

That’s the finding of an analysis of bankruptcy court data and the results of a questionnaire of 2,000 consumers just published by Consumer Reports.

Personal bankruptcy filings fell from more than 1.5 million in 2010 to 770,846 last year. The publication acknowledges that several factors have contributed to the decline, particularly 2005 changes in bankruptcy law that made personal bankruptcy harder and more costly to file and the general improvement in the economy since 2008. But its experts “almost all agreed that expanded health coverage played a major role in the marked, recent decline.”

SNIP

Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance plans in the individual and employer-sponsored markets routinely placed annual or lifetime limits on benefits; families facing a serious or chronic medical condition could outspend their annual benefits before the first crocus of spring, and lifetime benefits before the end of the year. The ACA outlawed such limits and mandated annual out-of-pocket limits instead, so the expenses of even the most beleaguered households were capped.

[questionseverything]

26. a very modest start

healthcare is a human right or at least it should be

hopefully soon we will catch up with the rest of the civilized world

[TheFourthMind]

12. 42 percent of 9.5mil times 92,098 equals approximately $350,000,000,000 That sound right? n/t

[Hortensis]

14. Terrible. But on the vengeful side, since they tend to be older,

I'm assuming well over half of them were either among the 25% who opposed the Clinton's national healthcare plan in the 1990s or initially among the over 75% who wanted and believed in the need for national healthcare when we were going to pass it in 1994 and another try in 1995.

Unfortunate a majority of the 75% were turned against it by the RW's "Harry and Louise" ads telling them it sounded good for others but what if it wasn't as good as what they already had?! Better not risk it just because others were going destitute and dying in large numbers.

"A government healthcare plan. They choose, we lose."

So some of these chose and, it took a while, but they lost, not just others.

[Evolve Dammit]

16. We need to right this ship. Liz or Bernie are the best shot. Unless you want "incremental"

adjustments that will be bent to the drug companies, their lawyers and lobbyists. This is the No. 1 cause of bankruptcy in the US. LOTS of other countries have done it; it's out turn. It will be a hell of a fight. They have the country so brainwashed about socialized medicine it is sickening (no pun intended). "Healthcare" costs are dragging all of us down, and it doesn't need to be this way. It will take political courage. I don't see the other candidates doing that.

[OhZone]

21. Maybe if Bernie hadn't turned against -

Hillarycare in favor of all-or-nothing Single Payer in 1994 or whatever, we'd be there already.

[questionseverything]

27. hillarycare was so confusing there was no chance it was ever going anywhr

to blame that on Bernie is wrong

she didn't work with anyone to build a consensus, it was a nightmare

[pnwmom]

29. Hillarycare was during Bill's administration. She had a simple plan for 2016 --

the ACA plus a public option.

And there was a consensus, and she won by 2.9 million votes. If it weren't for the electoral college put into place to attract slave-owning states to the union, Hillary would have been the first woman President.

[questionseverything]

31. i know when it was, i remember

she might of won the electoral college if we actually counted the votes instead of letting repub counting machines do it

[Autumn]

39. Your 1994 Hillarycare was never written into a bill or voted on. Nice try.

[Evolve Dammit]

42. Maybe so. He did campaign for her after she received the nomination, though.

[ck4829]

25. Yes we do

[JoeOtterbein]

17. Only in America!

Thanks for posting!

[BSdetect]

36. Key point.

[ck4829]

22. "Greatest healthcare system in the world" at it again I see

[pnwmom]

30. This study was done before the ACA. It needs to be repeated now

that preexisting conditions no longer prevent people from getting insurance, people no longer run into annual or lifetime limits, children are always covered on their parent's plans, and Medicaid has been expanded and premiums for others subsidized.

[DanieRains]

28. My Wife's Medication Costs 10 Times As Much Here As It Does Overseas When She Travels

It's ok, because our "insurance" pays for it.

Does anyone here understand how badly we are being screwed?

I saw a graph were diabetes supplies including insulin cost an average of $360 a month here and $19 a month in Italy.

Rape!!!!!

[Ilsa]

38. Grand theft, not rape.

The rape victims I know (myself included) see the two as incomparable.

[YOHABLO]

33. Then I guess I got nothing to lose.

[mnhtnbb]

34. $90000. will take you on a round the world cruise

I told my new doc a year ago that I don't intend to treat cancer at my age--69 my next birthday--for a number of reasons, but would prefer to take a round the world cruise if I get that diagnosis. So I don't do the suggested routine tests for colon or breast cancer. She was clearly stunned. I'd rather spend or leave the money to my kids. I'd rather not be miserable for the remaining few months of my life from chemo and radiation. I don't care about extending my life another year or two or ten. I've had a good life.

That's just my personal choice based on the circumstances of my life. But for people who feel differently, we need a system of universal health care coverage not connected to employment and without insurance companies in the middle taking huge bites out of health care dollars for profit that results in bankruptcy for people who suffer catastrophic illness.

[SammyWinstonJack]

35. Is this a GREAT country or what?

[Autumn]

37. My sister lost everything. The day she picked up my BIL's ashes who died from cancer she

was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was left with nothing by the time she paid all their bills off.