Search Results for 'cancer'

ObamaCare Plan Refuses to Cover Cancer Patient Treatment

[S]he bought [a] plan and was approved on Nov. 22. Because by January the plan was still not showing up on her online Humana account, however, she repeatedly called to confirm that it was active. The agents told her not to worry, she was definitely covered.

Then on Feb. 12, just before going into (yet another) surgery, she was informed by Humana that it would not, in fact, cover her Sandostatin, or other cancer-related medications. The cost of the Sandostatin alone, since Jan. 1, was $14,000, and the company was refusing to pay. (WSJ)

Mar 04, 2014 | 17 comments | by

Breast Cancer and Government Coverage versus Private Health Insurance

Increase-in-Breast-Reconstruction-After-Womens-Health-Law-EnactedHere are results from a 2008 paper on the relationship between breast cancer and type of health coverage in Rhode Island. Covering all breast cancer cases registered from 1996 to 2005, the data once again suggest that the uninsured fare almost as well as people on Medicaid.

The table below lists tumor size and stage at diagnosis by type of health coverage. When breast cancer victims on Medicaid are compared to those with private insurance, those on Medicaid have larger tumors at diagnosis and higher stage tumors. They also have more node positive tumors — tumors that have already spread to lymph nodes. This is cause for concern as survival rates are better for small tumors, tumors that are node negative, and those at stage 1 or below. Women on Medicaid who do have early stage tumors are also less likely to have surgery and, if they have surgery, to have surgery that removes only a part of their breast.

Feb 18, 2014 | 15 comments | by

Why Everyone Eventually Gets Cancer

As people age their cells amass more potentially cancerous mutations. Given a long enough life, cancer will eventually kill you — unless you die first of something else. That would be true even in a world free from carcinogens and equipped with the most powerful medical technology…

Maybe someday some of us will live to be 200. But barring an elixir for immortality, a body will come to a point where it has outwitted every peril life has thrown at it. And for each added year, more mutations will have accumulated. If the heart holds out, then waiting at the end will be cancer. (More)

Jan 10, 2014 | 19 comments | by

The Median Voter, the Marginal Patient, and ObamaCare: Why No Politician Competes for the Votes of Patients with Bladder Cancer

On October 30, President Obama gave a now infamous speech celebrating the going out of business of so-called “bad apple” insurers.

According to the President, “before the Affordable Care Act, these bad apple insurers had free rein every single year to limit the care that you received or used minor pre-existing conditions to jack up your premiums or bill you into bankruptcy.”

Only a few days later, Edie Sundby of San Diego wrote a heartbreaking op-ed in The Wall Street Journal describing how ObamaCare had forced her health insurer to cancel her policy, which had already spent $1.2 million on her treatment for a rare cancer. She may well go into 2014 without health insurance.

Much has been written about Ms. Sundby’s tragedy. John Goodman has used the case to explain the basic economics of health insurance.

This article will attempt to explain the political science behind the crisis. First, when President Obama asserted that insurers’ could “jack up” individuals’ premiums based on individual health status, he was absolutely wrong. Every state guarantees renewability of premiums for each beneficiary at the same rate as everyone else in the risk pool.

Nov 21, 2013 | 10 comments | by

Regulation of Cancer Drugs is More Complicated than You Think

Here is why it’s so hard for terminally ill patients to get compassion access to unapproved drugs:

Onaccess_deniedly 6 percent of early-stage cancer drugs ever come to market, because many are found to have severe side effects or simply don’t work. Given those odds, companies hesitate to do anything to jeopardize a product too soon. If they give drugs away, a disastrous side effect or other poor outcome could spur bad publicity and extra scrutiny from regulators. Even more important, if doctors simply let people take untested medicines without going through all the clinical trials, drug companies would most likely never get anyone to enroll in them, never get the data on safety and efficacy for F.D.A. approval and never pass the gateway to big sales. “Even if patients with cancer are willing buyers,” writes George Annas, a Boston University expert on medical law, “drug manufacturers are not willing sellers.” (More)

Nov 13, 2013 | 13 comments | by

Cancer Care

As outlined by Thomas Smith and Bruce Hillner in a now-classic piece, too many patients are subjected to punishing and futile treatments. Too much costly imaging is performed, for too little therapeutic benefit. Too often, costly supportive therapies, such as Epogen, that raise red blood cell counts are provided when they are not needed. The lack of easily used electronic health records aggravates fragmentation of care and perpetuates miscommunication and medical errors.

This isn’t an issue of rationing. America can amply afford the $125 bCancer-Careillion we devote to cancer care. Cancer accounts for only about 5 percent of our nation’s $2.8 trillion health-care economy. Yet particularly in the case of advanced cancers, both patients and the wider society could receive greater value for what is spent. Many patients require care delivered with greater thoughtfulness: less-toxic treatment regimes that relieve suffering and protect quality of life when curative care is not possible.

Proper care also requires greater clarity and candor upfront — particularly when the prognosis is not what patients are hoping to hear. According to one recent survey of patients with metastatic cancer, “69% of patients with lung cancer and 81% of those with colorectal cancer did not report understanding that chemotherapy was not at all likely to cure their cancer.” False hope provides temporary comfort. It cannot provide the basis for a realistic or humane treatment plan, much less confidence and trust in the providers.

Full piece by Harold Pollack worth reading.

Sep 24, 2013 | 14 comments | by

Cancer Patient Stuck with Higher Bills as Obama Risk Pool Runs Low on Cash

Coping with advanced cancer, Bev Veals was in the hospital for chemo this summer when she got a call that her health plan was shutting down. Then, the substitute insurance she was offered wanted her to pay up to $3,125, on top of premiums.cancermanagement

It sounds like one of those insurance horror stories President Barack Obama told to sell his health overhaul to Congress, but Veals wasn’t in the clutches of a profit-driven company. Instead, she’s covered by Obama’s law — one of about 100,000 people with serious medical issues in a financially troubled government program. (More)

Sep 12, 2013 | 14 comments | by

Dinosaurs Died of Breast Cancer Too, and Other Links

pink_breast_cancer_ribbon150 million year old dinosaur had breast cancer.

Blue Shield of California to enrollees: don’t expect us to pay for proton beam therapy.

David Friedman on who has and who hasn’t used poison gas.

Are left-handed people smarter? HT: Tyler Cowen

Repealing the individual mandate is a budget winner.

Sep 04, 2013 | 14 comments | by

Why Aren’t There More Cancer Vaccines?

Because of the way drug patents work:

The duration of patent protection in the U.S. is 20 years. All drug innovations get patented at the time of discovery, but late-stage cancer treatments will work their way through the clinical trials required for FDA approval much more quickly, since the effect on patient survival will be apparent within a couple of years. That means fewer years of the patent clock ticking without revenues coming in. For a preventive treatment like the HPV vaccine, the 20 years of patent protection will be long expired before any clinical trial can show whether lives are being saved, which in turn makes vaccines far less alluring investments for biotech companies. It’s yet another indication of America’s patent system’s desperate need for a makeover…

Generally, to get approval for a new cancer drug you need to show that patients live longer. It doesn’t take long to determine whether a new treatment adds months of life in the case of metastatic cancers (those that have spread throughout the body): 90 percent of patients with such cancers are dead in less than five years. But it can take more than a decade to see whether survival is affected for localized cancers that remain confined to a single organ. And for treatments aimed at cancer prevention — the holy grail of cancer research — it could take multiple decades to prove a treatment’s efficacy.

Full Ray Fisman post worth reading.

Aug 28, 2013 | 14 comments | by

How ObamaCare is Hurting Cancer Patients

Scott Gottlieb writing in the Wall Street Journal:

[E]ligible hospitals are buying private oncology practices so they can book more of the expensive cancer drug purchases at the discount rates. More than 400 oncology practices have been acquired by hospitals since ObamaCare passed. Acquiring a single oncologist and moving the doctor’s drug prescriptions under a hospital’s 340B program can generate an additional profit of more than $1 million for a hospital.

Because the overhead for a hospital is higher than for a doctor’s office, a patient treated in a hospital clinic incurs $6,500 more in costs than the same person treated in a private medical office, according to data from the Community Oncology Alliance. Patients who get chemotherapy at a hospital also face an additional $650 in co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses.

Aug 01, 2013 | 11 comments | by
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