Study finds a link between Cancer, bankruptcy and death

Bankruptcies are a proxy of sorts for cancer’s heavy financial toll; since filings are tracked and measurable, researchers can use them to determine how skyrocketing cancer costs impact society. In a watershed study published in 2013, Ramsey found that cancer patients, on average, were about 2.5 times more likely to declare bankruptcy as those without cancer.
This latest study, published Monday in Journal of Clinical Oncology, showed that cancer patients who go bankrupt are nearly 80 percent more likely to die than patients who don’t, and some cancers had significantly higher mortality rates. Prostate cancer patients who filed for bankruptcy were almost twice as likely to die; bankrupt colorectal cancer patients were 2.5 times more likely to die as those not done in by debt.
“That blows away the benefits of many, if not most, treatments,” said Ramsey, an internist and health economist who launched HICOR in 2013 to help reduce the human and economic burden of cancer. “To me, it’s one thing if you go bankrupt. Financially, you’re really in bad shape but you come out of it with your cancer treated. But if it actually is a double hit, where your very survival is affected? That is profound.”