Mortality rates due to cancer do not seem to reduce despite the high cost of cancer care ($200 billion per year roughly $600 per person) in the U.S. as per a study at Yale University and Vassar College published in JAMA Health Forum.
“There is a common perception that the U.S. offers the most advanced cancer care in the world. Our system is touted for developing new treatments and getting them to patients more quickly than other countries. We were curious whether the substantial U.S. investment on cancer care is indeed associated with better cancer outcomes,” says lead author Ryan Chow, Yale University.
‘Despite the U.S. spending twice as much on cancer care as the average high-income country (highest spending rate), the cancer mortality rates of the country are only slightly better than average.’
However, the study reveals no relationship between national cancer care spending to population-level cancer mortality rates, as said by Chow, “in other words, countries that spend more on cancer care do not necessarily have better cancer outcomes.”
Cancer Care Costs: Is Higher Better ?
Contrarily, lower cancer mortality rates were rather observed in other six countries Australia, Finland, Iceland, Japan, Korea, and Switzerland that had spent lower than the United States.
“The pattern of spending more and getting less is well-documented in the U.S. healthcare system; now we see it in cancer care, too. Other countries and systems have much to teach the U.S. if we could be open to change,” says co-author Elizabeth Bradley, Vassar College.
The study thereby invites more research to identify specific policy interventions that could meaningfully reform the United States cancer care system.
Source: Medindia
