Study Finds Uninsured Cancer Patients Twice As Likely to Die Within Five Years

If there is any good news in the study, it is that uninsured cancer patients were found to only make up a small fraction of total cases. According to the Associated Press, less than 5% of cancer patients are without adequate health coverage.

However, the average 4% or so who are uninsured translate to literally thousands of lives. The AP estimate places the number of hospital cancer deaths of uninsured patients in the U.S. in 2005 at a minimum of 20,000. Approximately 560,000 people died of cancer nationwide that year.

Peggy Hicks, the 67-year-old widow of a Florida man who died of cancer in August while uninsured, is typical of this group.

"I would just like for something to be done to help someone else so they don't have to go through what we went through," she said.

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Her husband, Edward, suffered through his cancer because healthcare providers were unable to authorize timely chemotherapy treatments over payment issues.

"He was so ill. And you're trying to get him help, and you can't, you can't," said Peggy.

The study also highlighted other factors which may have contributed to the final results, pointing out that most cancers strike victims aged 65 or older, who are by and large covered by Medicare. Of course, for those who have to wait until they have reached the current age of eligibility for federal healthcare coverage, the diagnosis frequently comes much too late.

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"Insurance makes a big difference in how early you are detecting disease," affirmed Emory University health policy researcher Ken Thorpe.

The new ACS study found that in 1999 and 2000 almost 600,000 adults under age 65 were either without private insurance or Medicaid and oftentimes completely uninsured. Researchers then examined the records of these patients, finding that those who were uninsured were 1.6 times as likely to die within five years of diagnosis as patients covered by private insurance.

Ultimately, more than one-third (35%) of uninsured patients had succumbed to their disease by the end of five years, compared to less than a quarter (23%) of those with private insurance.

Dr. John Ayanian, a professor of medicine and healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, testified, "The differences that we see in outcomes after people are diagnosed, even among those with early-stage disease, suggest that problems with quality of care may be an important reason."

The Kaiser Family Foundation, one of the nation's leading healthcare policy institutes, conducted a survey in 2006 of 930 households in which a family member was dealing with cancer that found that more than one in four uninsured patients had either delayed or completely forgone treatment due to prohibitive costs.