With the world’s highest healthcare costs and the industrial world’s least effective insurance scheme (50 million uninsured) it’s not surprising that people with cancer delay getting medical care. They simply can’t afford it.
All together, more than 2 million of 12 million U.S. adult cancer survivors did not get one or more needed medical services, the researchers estimate.
The study is being called the first to estimate how often current and former patients have skipped getting care because of money worries. It was led by Kathryn Weaver, a researcher at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The work was based on national surveys of more than 110,000 people, including 6,600 cancer survivors, from 2003 through 2006. It was released online Monday by the American Cancer Society’s medical journal, Cancer.
link: The Associated Press: Study: Millions of cancer survivors put off care
Medicynic 