Death care vs Health care

I have heard it said that the US has a system of ‘death care’ rather than ‘health care.’

 

Reading a report that Lung Cancer screening is effective and fairly inexpensive (as compared to breast and cervical screenings), but not picked up as a covered service by the majority of private health insurers seems to support that view.

 

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, “Annual CT scans of longtime smokers could reduce lung cancer deaths by 20 percent without causing excessive harm to patients whose readings turned out to be false positives.  Those findings were based on a clinical trial involving 53,000 smokers.

 

That investment could give each person whose lung cancer was caught early an extra year of life, at the cost of $18,862 per patient.  These figures put CT scanning for lung cancer on a par with colonoscopy testing for early detection for colorectal cancer, the study found.  Both tests are cheaper than mammograms and pap tests that most health insurers pay for to screen for breast and cervical cancer.

 

‘This screening process offers a good value for the money, and it saves lives,’ said study leader Bruce Pyenson, with the consulting and actuarial firm Milliman in New York.”

 

Until next time,

 

Polly

 

 

 

 

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