Cancer Care Costs Rise, Experts Predict Financial Crisis

With the rapidly increasing number of cancer cases worldwide combined with the steep costs of cancer care treatments, an international group of oncology experts thinks the cancer community needs to rethink cancer treatment, before it's too late.

According to their research, by the year 2030, there will be about 27 million new cancer cases each year.

Today, about $286 billion is spent on cancer care each year, and the cost of high-tech treatments and drugs aren't getting any cheaper.

The report stated: "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. There should be fair prices and real value from new technologies.”

This includes performing expensive end-stage cancer treatments on patients who, in the end, receive no benefits (including a longer life span) at all.

While this might sound awful, the researchers made an interesting point, saying that most end-stage cancer patients would rather spend their last days in the comfort of their own home, rather than undergoing expensive chemotherapy and drug treatments, especially when their cancer has passed the point of no return.

Some of these drugs cost up to $100,000 a year (which is more than most Americans' salaries), and clinical trials show serious side effects and life extension of only a few months.

Although these warnings are quite controversial, hopefully this will spark some change within the cancer community. The experts who wrote the study encourage patients, doctors, surgeons, lawmakers, and drug manufacturers to work together as a team with one goal in mind: more affordable and effective cancer care.

To learn more, read the full article here: The High Cost of Cancer - An Impending Crisis?