“Gwendolyn Jackson was financially sound before her cervical cancer diagnosis—she was gainfully employed, insured and secure in a home of her own,” Brianna Abbott and Peter Loftus write over at The Wall Street Journal. “But now, the 53-year-old has tens of thousands of dollars of medical debt. Chemotherapy drained her energy and she suffered other health problems, including a stroke. She lost her housing-coordinator job because of the physical toll. An eviction notice showed up on Jackson’s door, and her truck was repossessed. ‘One morning, I woke up and I was a top case manager,’ said Jackson, who lives in Houston. ‘Then I was losing everything.’ The economic burden of a cancer diagnosis is getting strikingly worse in the U.S., as drug and medical costs soar and more patients live longer with the disease. About 55% of cancer drugs introduced between 2019 and 2023 cost at least $200,000 a year, according to Iqvia’s Institute for Human Data Science. And an increasing number of patients are working-age, a group more likely to report financial hardship after diagnosis compared with older adults. Nearly 60% of working-age cancer survivors report facing some financial difficulty. Many patients struggle to afford care and end up taking on debt, with some getting payday loans or running up credit cards. Cancer alone accounts for some 40% of medical campaigns seeking financial help on GoFundMe, research shows. ‘Cutting back on meds. Cutting back on doctor visits. Losing your home. Cutting back on food — these are not things that we want to believe happen to people with cancer in this country,’ said Dr. Reshma Jagsi, a radiation oncologist at Emory University School of Medicine and the Winship Cancer Institute. Among common diseases, cancer creates a uniquely difficult financial strain known as financial toxicity. Treatments with expensive medicines start immediately and come with a string of nonmedical costs. Chemotherapy and other treatments can leave patients too weak to work for weeks or months. This can result in a twofold blow, with patients losing income and their employer-sponsored health insurance. The financial fallout can last for years. ‘It can cause this wealth shock that can ripple on,’ said Dr. Fumiko Chino, a radiation oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, whose husband died of cancer over a decade ago. Debt collectors still call her about his unpaid bills.” Brianna Abbott and Peter Loftus, “Cancer is capsizing Americans’ finances. ‘I was losing everything,'” The Wall Street Journal.
