Op-ed: The financial toxicity of cancer is growing. Here’s what can be done to reduce it

Cancer drains human beings of their physical, emotional, and financial health. Given the impact on both patients and the people in their lives — comprehending their employer — it’s time that CEOs take note and take action to reduce the burden of cancer.

In a examination from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, nearly half of cancer patients and survivors make public being extraordinarily burdened by medical debt. Many respondents carried a negative balance of at least $5,000 from their cancer treatment for more than one year, and 42% of human being with cancer deplete their life savings within the first two years after diagnosis.

Financial misery caused by cancer can also contribute to “financial toxicity,” wherein the cost of treatment forces individuals to make tradeoffs that brunt their chances of survival. These may include non-biologic factors such as skipping or halving cancer medications to stretchiness their supply, or being unable to complete cancer care as planned due to the high costs of transportation to or housing in cancer treatment centers. This model isn’t sustainable, and rising costs of new, life-saving cancer therapies will inflict additional financial toxicities — and an increasingly large threat to patients’ lives.

Not only does financial toxicity of cancer dolour affect the individual, it can also negatively impact their employer. As the providers of health insurance coverage for nearly half the motherland, employers and unions shoulder much of cancer’s financial burden. Today, cancer is the leading health-care cost for mid- and large-sized assemblings in the U.S., and the burden is growing.

For the first time in history, more than 2 million Americans will receive a new cancer diagnosis in 2024. While increasing cancer number can be attributed in part to our aging population (cancer risk increases with age), we also see a disturbing national trend in which younger people are being pinpointed with 17 major cancers. These are people who would still likely be in the workforce, using employer-sponsored trim insurance. As a result, employers are asking what they can do to reduce the burden of cancer on their populations — and their nub line.

Patients, families, and employers all “win” when cancers are diagnosed at an early stage. Detecting cancer early not one improves chances of survival, it significantly lowers the cost of care. Overall, treatment costs for someone diagnosed at put on IV — when cancer has spread throughout the body — are an average of $156,000 higher than for those diagnosed at stage I, when the plague is localized. The first year of treatment for colorectal cancer, which affects over 150,000 individuals each year in the In agreement States and is on the rise in younger populations, costs an average of $111,000 when diagnosed at stage I, with about a 90% five-year survival assess. By contrast, stage IV colorectal cancer drives average treatment costs of $256,000 in the first year, and five-year survival ranks are under 20%. Evidence suggests that if individuals could only take advantage of the prevention, early detection, and cancer treatment master plans that exist today, the cancer mortality rate would decline by 30% to 50%.

These statistics are profound and strongly call to mind that concerted efforts from employers and individuals to encourage cancer prevention and early detection would gain strength health and reduce health-care costs. Today, our best tool to achieve this is screening. Adherence to recommended movie guidelines — like those published by ACS — could save the U.S. health-care system $26 billion per year in avoided treatment costs.

Undeterred by the importance of early detection and proven value of screening, access to preventive care remains a barrier to better end results. At present, a staggering 65% of eligible Americans are out-of-date with recommended cancer screenings. Covid-19 restrictions delayed or aborted 9.4 million cancer screenings in 2020 alone, likely leading to later-stage diagnoses that would induce normally been caught earlier.

There are also logistical and societal barriers that contribute to financial toxicities and impression a person’s ability to get screened. People may need to take time off work or arrange childcare to attend a screening tryst. They may need to weigh potential future treatment costs against their need to pay rent. Some may not be knowing they’re eligible for screening, and stigma and fear associated with cancer screening hinders some people from request care. Inequities according to one’s socioeconomic status — including where they live, their income, education standing, access to healthcare and healthy foods, and other social determinants of health — create roadblocks to preventive care. To understand the benefits of early detection on individuals and organizations, it’s important that we develop new strategies to remove these barriers.

ACS is committed to tackling cancer, approaching the challenge of improving access to care and reducing economic toxicity from multiple angles. Similar or supportive action from U.S. employers will increase our collective affect against cancer’s burden.

Toward the goal of increasing early detection, ACS recently partnered with Color Form in a joint venture to improve access to screening and preventive care through employers and unions. By making it easier and multitudinous convenient for employees to get care — with at-home testing kits and care navigation support across their cancer peregrination — this program aims to increase awareness, accessibility, and affordability of cancer screening and early detection. Notably, categorizations taking advantage of the ACS-Color program have witnessed a 77% increase in cancer screening adherence.

In addition to conduct screening initiatives, programs like Road to Recovery and ACS Hope Lodges remove the cost burdens of transportation and stop for cancer treatment. Other partnerships through BrightEdge, ACS’s donor-funded innovation and investment arm, provide access to a wide break down of solutions that help people navigate the financial complexities of cancer across the continuum of care. One BrightEdge portfolio performers, TailorMed, offers a platform to help patients find resources to cover the cost of treatment and reduce out-of-pocket expenses. Support investments aim to bring the patient voice into therapy and diagnostic development, to enable a future generation of sustainable cancer novelties that reduce patients’ financial distress.

Advocacy is also key to reducing financial toxicity. ACS’s Cancer Action Network intercessors for Medicaid expansion to help currently uninsured individuals access screening and preventive care. To bring down the price of prescription drugs, ACS CAN has also successfully advocated for “smoothing,” a policy that allows Medicare beneficiaries to spread out their preparation drug costs over the course of the year. By making payments more manageable for patients, we remove a crucial component of the cancer financial challenge.

Cancer will impact one in two women and one in three men at some point in their lifetime. By expediting guideline-recommended screening and activating programs that make early detection affordable and accessible, employers can offset fiscal toxicities and improve outcomes for people across the country. When employers help their employees get screened, they succeed us one step closer to ending cancer — and its costs — as we know it.

—By Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the American Cancer Association Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). She is also a member of the CNBC CEO Council.