Cancer costs US more than $156 billion annually, with drugs a leading
expense

Date:
October 6, 2021
Source:
Penn State
Summary:
Care for the 15 most prevalent types of cancer in the U.S. cost
approximately $156.2 billion in 2018, according to a team
researchers.

The team also found that medication was the biggest expense and
that medication expense for breast, lung, lymphoma and colorectal
cancers incurred the most costs.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Care for the 15 most prevalent types of cancer in the U.S. cost
approximately $156.2 billion in 2018, according to a team of Penn State
College of Medicine researchers. The team also found that medication
was the biggest expense and that medication expense for breast, lung,
lymphoma and colorectal cancers incurred the most costs.


==========================================================================
In a study, the researchers examined a database that included statistics
on cancer care for the 402,115 privately insured cancer patients younger
than 65 in the U.S. The aim of the study was to gather this data to help understand how money is being spent on cancer care. This information traditionally has been difficult to track, mainly because the U.S. has different ways to cover healthcare costs, such as private insurance
for people less than 65 years of age and Medicare for people aged 65
and over, according to Dr. Nicholas Zaorsky, assistant professor from
the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Public Health Sciences at the
College of Medicine and researcher at Penn State Cancer Institute.

"The public often hears that the U.S. spends an inordinate amount of money
on health care, but no one has quantified exactly how big that number is
and how is that number broken down for exactly what types of services,"
said Zaorsky, who is an associate of the Institute for Computational
and Data Sciences.

"Cancer is a leading cause of death, actually overtaking heart disease
as the leading cause of death in the U.S. over the past few years. But,
it's still unknown what we pay for in cancer care. As a team, we wanted
to look at what private insurances are paying for each kind of cancer
and for each type of service. We also wanted to look at what are the
greatest number of services performed and how much does each one of those services cost." The researchers, who report their findings today (Oct. 6)
in JAMA Network Open, said that the database included 38.4 million types
of procedures -- or common procedural terminology (CPT) codes -- for the
15 cancers, which include breast, prostrate, colorectal, lung, lymphoma, melanoma, uterus, head and neck, bladder, kidney, thyroid, stomach,
liver, pancreas and esophagus cancers. The cohort study used 2018 data
-- the most recent complete numbers available - - from the IBM Watson
Health MarketScan. The sample included 27.1 million privately insured individuals, including patients diagnosed with the most prevalent cancers.

Breast cancer incurred the most services, about 10.9 million services
and procedures, followed by colorectal cancer, which had approximately
3.9 million services listed in the database. Breast cancer was also the
most expensive type of cancer, costing a total of $3.4 billion, followed
by lung cancer and colorectal cancer, which were both estimated to incur
around $1.1 billion in costs.

According to the researchers, drug costs represent the most expensive
category for treating cancer patients. About $4 billion were spent
on drugs to treat cancer, which is double the $2 billion paid out for surgeries.

The study was not meant to assess whether the spending on drugs -- or
any of the services -- was cost-effective, although Zaorsky said the
study may help guide future research into the subject.

"It's hard to say like what is a reasonable price for a drug or service,
but I think it's fair to say that they make up the plurality of our
health care spending in the U.S., then some would argue that this money
may be better spent elsewhere in other services," said Zaorsky. "These
figures basically just show you how much the medical system spends on
certain types of cancers versus another one. You might ask if these
costs are justified. For example, pancreatic cancer is one of the
deadliest cancers, but the total cost of care that we devote to pancreatic cancer is relatively low versus something like indolent prostate cancer." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Penn_State. Original written by Matt Swayne. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Nicholas G. Zaorsky et al. Medical Service Use and Charges for
Cancer
Care in 2018 for Privately Insured Patients Younger
Than 65 Years in the US. JAMA Network Open, 2021 DOI:
10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.27784 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211006132334.htm

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