Cancer Care Becoming "Unaffordable"

Oncology experts are saying that with the rapid rise in Cancer cases in recent years, coupled with the increasingly expensive new treatments for the disease, that the Cancer care is becoming unaffordable in most developed countries.

Health care costs related to Cancer, and many other illnesses and diseases, is ballooning. Patients and insurance companies are now forced to pay for expensive treatments, medications, new technologies, drugs and care plans. Oncology experts are saying that there should be a change in thinking of how patients are able to access these treatments.

"The Cancer community needs to take responsibility and not accept a sub-standard evidence base and an ethos of very small benefit at whatever cost," said the report, commissioned by the Lancet Oncology medical journal on the costs of Cancer care. It continued, "There should be fair prices and real value from new technologies."

Approximately 12 million people around the world are diagnosed with Cancer every year. That number is expected to rise to 27 million by the year 2030.

The cost of Cancer is estimated to be around $286 billion a year, and with medical costs making up more than half the economic burden and productivity losses account for 1/4 of those costs, according to the Economist intelligence United data cited in the report.

The report was led by Richard Sullivan from Britain's King's Health Partners Integrated Cancer Center in London. It said that policy-makers, along with doctors, patients groups and others in the health industry should team up to find ways to help patients afford their much needed Cancer Treatments.

"We are at a crossroads for affordable Cancer care, where our choices - or refusal to make choices - will affect the lives of millions of people," said Sullivan. "Do we bury our heads in the sand, keep our fingers crossed and hope that it turns out fine, or do we have difficult debates and make hard choices?"