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• Posted October 18, 2024

A Cancer Diagnosis Takes Devastating Toll on Family Finances

Ruined credit scores and big risks for bankruptcy: All part of the long-term financial fallout from the words "You have cancer," according to two new studies.

“These are the first studies to provide numerical evidence of financial toxicity among cancer survivors,” said study lead author Dr. Benjamin James. He's chief of general surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School.

In one of the studies, James and colleagues tracked Experian credit data for 2010 through 2019. They looked at long-term financial outcomes for nearly 100,000 Massachusetts residents who'd gotten a cancer diagnosis.

The researchers compared the financial health of the cancer survivors to almost 189,000 people who hadn't gotten cancer.

The survivors had a five times higher odds of filing for bankruptcy over the study period compared to healthy folk.

The survivors' credit scores were also an average of 80 points lower than that of folks without cancer, and they had much higher rates of debt collection, and medical debt collection in particular.

The second study undertaken by James' team focused on the treatment of over 7,200 people with colon cancer and how that might affect their credit scores.

For example, compared to people who had been spared radiation therapy and only underwent surgery to treat their tumor, those who got radiation plus surgery had an average 62-point drop in their credit scores, the research showed.

Patients who got chemotherapy plus surgery had an average 14-point drop in their credit scores, according to James' group.

Cancer type also seemed to matter: People with cancers of the bladder, liver, lung and colon cancers had the highest average declines in credit scores, typically lasting for nearly a decade.

“There are certain [other] factors that are associated with worse financial toxicity, including being under the age of 62, identifying as Black or Hispanic, not being married, having an area deprivation index below the median, not owning a home, and having an income below a median of $52,000 a year,” James added. 

His team published its findings Friday in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American College of Surgeons.

The permanence of cancer's financial toll was striking, James said in a meeting news release.

“We are looking years after a diagnosis and we see that the credit score goes down and it never comes back up,” he noted.

He added that the data came from Massachusetts, which mandates universal health care coverage.

“This persistence of financial challenges, even in a state with relatively high insurance coverage, calls for broader policy changes and reforms, including reconsidering debt collection practices,” James said. “Further research is needed, but I think financial security should be a priority in cancer care.”

Because these findings were presented at a medical meeting, they should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

Find out more about resources to help cover the cost of cancer care at the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship.

SOURCE: American College of Surgeons, news release, Oct. 18, 2024