Medicare 5-year Cancer Bill Tops $21.1 Billion: Study

Five years of cancer care for America's elderly cost Medicare $21.1 billion, a figure that will swell as the baby boomer generation ages, U.S. government researchers said on Tuesday.

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute said the cost of cancer care over five years varies widely by tumor type -- from less than $20,000 for an elderly patient with breast cancer or melanoma to more than $40,000 for a patient with lymphoma, brain or other nervous system cancers.

The figures, based on people diagnosed with cancer in 2004, suggest the highest costs occur within the first 12 months of care, when people are undergoing costly treatments, and in the last 12 months of life, when in-hospital costs spike.

The research by Robin Yabroff of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues, which appears in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is intended to offer policymakers a tool to prepare as the U.S. population expands and ages.

Joseph Lipscomb, a health policy researcher at Emory University in Atlanta, said the study is the first to combine cost estimates and survival data to arrive at long-term national estimates for 18 of the most common types of cancers in the elderly.

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