- 62 percent of cancer patients report being in debt due to their treatment.
- 55 percent accrue at least $10,000 in debt, while 3 percent file for bankruptcy.
- Cancer costs exceed $80 billion in America each year.
Rebecca Meyer was diagnosed with glioblastoma when she was 5 years old. She fought bravely for 10 months before dying on her 6th birthday. The total cost of of her treatments during that time? $1,691,627.45.
Cancer is costly, emotionally and socially. But it's especially pricey in terms of money. The stress of being unable to pay for treatment doesn't help your immune system while going through chemotherapy or radiation. It's impossible to relieve yourself of tension when your medical costs are bankrupting you and your family.
This is more common than you might imagine. A new study, published this month in The American Journal of Medicine, discovered that 42 percent of patients deplete their life savings during the first two years of treatment. There's good reason the term "financial toxicity" is in the name of this report.
Of the 9.5 million cancer diagnoses studied between 2000–2012, researchers discovered that 42.4 percent of patients (median age 68.6±9.4 years) spent all of their money, averaging $92,098. This follows disturbing news from earlier this year that 40 percent of Americans can't afford to pay $400 in case of an emergency. The math is not adding up.
Financial toxicity led Fumiko Chino to co-write a research letter in JAMA Oncology last November. After her husband surpassed his insurance policy's $500,000 lifetime limit, Chino drained her savings to pay for his treatment. When he died, she was left hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
In her study of 300 cancer patients, Chino and team discovered that over one-third of them had to pay more than expected for their care, which put a strain on their decision-making process.
Facing unexpected treatment costs was associated with lower willingness to pay for care, even when adjusting for financial burden. This suggests that unpreparedness for treatment-related expenses may impact future cost-conscious decision making.
A 2016 systematic review of 45 studies, published in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that up to 62 percent of patients report being in debt due to treatment. Another study of over 4,700 patients from that year discovered that 55 percent accrued at least $10,000 in debt, while 3 percent filed for bankruptcy.
Cancer costs exceed $80 billion in America each year. Over half of all cancer patients "experienced house repossession, bankruptcy, loss of independence, and relationship breakdowns." Up to 85 percent of patients have to stop working for up to six months, putting further strain on their finances.
On October 16, cancer patients in New Zealand petitioned Parliament for treatment funding. Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images
The financial toxicity study above comes to possibly the only conclusion imaginable:
As large financial burdens have been found to adversely affect access to care and outcomes, the active development of approaches to mitigate these effects among already vulnerable groups remains of key importance.
Health care remains one of the most important issues in this election cycle — it always seems to be an issue, sadly. Seventy-two percent of all political ads that ran in Washington during September mentioned health care in some capacity, while 50 percent of national ads run by Democrats have used this talking point (compared to 28 percent of national Republican campaigns). We need to figure this out.
As a cancer survivor, I deeply empathize with this problem. There is no easy answer, as cancer treatment is expensive. Funding is needed to keep researchers searching for cures and better treatments. Hospitals need to stay in business, and cancer happens to be one of the more expensive widespread diseases to treat.
But we've also set up our society in such a way that these high costs are passed on to those who can afford it least. This study is just one example of a culture that continues to divide its wealth to such extremes. That might not be the country we wanted, but it's what we've got. Where we go from here is up to us, and a sizable piece of this puzzle will be put into place on November 6.
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In the slightly macabre experiment to find out where tattoo ink travels to in the body, French and German researchers recently used synchrotron X-ray fluorescence in four "inked" human cadavers — as well as one without. The results of their 2017 study? Some of the tattoo ink apparently settled in lymph nodes.
Image from the study.
As the authors explain in the study — they hail from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment — it would have been unethical to test this on live animals since those creatures would not be able to give permission to be tattooed.
Because of the prevalence of tattoos these days, the researchers wanted to find out if the ink could be harmful in some way.
"The increasing prevalence of tattoos provoked safety concerns with respect to particle distribution and effects inside the human body," they write.
It works like this: Since lymph nodes filter lymph, which is the fluid that carries white blood cells throughout the body in an effort to fight infections that are encountered, that is where some of the ink particles collect.
Image by authors of the study.
Titanium dioxide appears to be the thing that travels. It's a white tattoo ink pigment that's mixed with other colors all the time to control shades.
The study's authors will keep working on this in the meantime.
“In future experiments we will also look into the pigment and heavy metal burden of other, more distant internal organs and tissues in order to track any possible bio-distribution of tattoo ink ingredients throughout the body. The outcome of these investigations not only will be helpful in the assessment of the health risks associated with tattooing but also in the judgment of other exposures such as, e.g., the entrance of TiO2 nanoparticles present in cosmetics at the site of damaged skin."
