Medicare Costs Soar for Cancer Care

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To help contain costs, Yabroff suggested that more emphasis be placed on cancer screening and early diagnosis, as well as lifestyle changes, such as not smoking.

Paul Precht, policy director at the Medicare Rights Center, said he thinks Medicare will have to change some of its policies to keep costs down while continuing to offer care to the elderly with cancer.

"Clearly, treatment of cancer is expensive," he said. "When people talk about the sustainability of Medicare, they have to look at findings like this, because we are paying for treatments of very serious diseases, and that's why it's so expensive."

Precht agreed that one way to lower costs is to put more emphasis on early detection and increase Medicare benefits for prevention. Also, federal law needs to be changed to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies, he said.

"The cost of cancer drugs is going through the roof," he said. "Medicare really has to look at ways to deal with that."

People are already paying high co-payments and coinsurance for care under Medicare, and these costs are likely to grow, Precht added. And as those costs increase, it could reach a breaking point. "People will say: 'Yes, I want to live, but I don't have the money, so I guess I'm not going to,' and that's not right," he said.

Increasing costs don't necessarily lead to the rationing of health care, Precht said. "But there needs to be cost-effectiveness analysis, so there is some relationship to the effectiveness of the treatment we are paying for," he said.

More information

To learn about financial assistance and other resources for people with cancer, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.