News on U.S. government agencies, U.S. politics, companies doing business with U.S. federal government. Read U.S. national and local news. This site is not affiliated with United States Government.
(USGovernment-News.Com, May 29, 2013 ) Albuquerque, NM -- The new study, by Health Affairs, suggests the need for healthcare providers to better assess cancer patients’ financial health and the need for more policy changes to help cancer patients cover costs of treatment in the first year of diagnosis.
Researchers based the study on people diagnosed with cancer between the years 1995 and 2009, excluding those younger than 21 and those older than 90. Then, researchers matched each cancer patient with a non-cancer counterpart, ensuring a match year of birth, ZIP code for area, and gender. The study looked into the two types of bankruptcy: Chapter 7, which involved liquidated assets to pay creditors, and Chapter 13, which involves a repayment plan to pay back all or a portion of the debt accrued.
In a sample of 197,840 cancer patients from the sample years 1995-2009, 2.2 percent filed for bankruptcy protection after their diagnosis, with the majority of being in Chapter 7, while just 17% were filed under Chapter 13 bankruptcy. Only 1.1 percent of the 197,840 non-cancer subjects filed for bankruptcy. In these cases, while Chapter 7 was more common, 27% of them filed for Chapter 13.
Comparing the cancer patients who filed against those didn’t file, those who did file were more likely to be young, nonwhite females with a local or regional-staged diagnosis, as opposed to a distant-stage diagnosis. Localized-stage means cancer that has only affected the organ where it started, where distant-stage is means the cancer has spread beyond the primary site to nearby lymph nodes or tissue.
Younger people with cancer experienced the highest bankruptcy rates across all cancer types. The bankruptcy rates also appeared to vary across cancer types, however, there were notably higher rates for patients with thyroid cancer.
We are pleased to offer you this exciting, new, and entirely free professional resource. Visit our Free Industry resource center today to browse our selection of 600+ complimentary Industry magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more. Get popular titles including:
