title: Washington State cancer patients found to be at greater risk for bankruptcy than people without a cancer diagnosis.
abstract: Much has been written about the relationship between high medical expenses and the likelihood of filing for bankruptcy, but the relationship between receiving a cancer diagnosis and filing for bankruptcy is less well understood. We estimated the incidence and relative risk of bankruptcy for people age twenty-one or older diagnosed with cancer compared to people the same age without cancer by conducting a retrospective cohort analysis that used a variety of medical, personal, legal, and bankruptcy sources covering the Western District of Washington State in US Bankruptcy Court for the period 1995-2009. We found that cancer patients were 2.65 times more likely to go bankrupt than people without cancer. Younger cancer patients had 2-5 times higher rates of bankruptcy than cancer patients age sixty-five or older, which indicates that Medicare and Social Security may mitigate bankruptcy risk for the older group. The findings suggest that employers and governments may have a policy role to play in creating programs and incentives that could help people cover expenses in the first year following a cancer diagnosis.
authors.affiliation: Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, USA. sramsey@fhcrc.org
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ramsey
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Blough
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kirchhoff
authors.forename: Karma
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kreizenbeck
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fedorenko
authors.forename: Kyle
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Snell
authors.forename: Polly
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Newcomb
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hollingworth
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Overstreet
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D016361:Bankruptcy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D005382:Financing, Personal / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D053208:Kaplan-Meier Estimate; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000145:classification / Q000191:economics*; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012306:Risk; D018426:SEER Program / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D018582:Sick Leave / Q000191:economics / Q000639:trends; D012923:Social Class; D014478:Unemployment / Q000639:trends; D014861:Washington; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Cost Of Health Care; Health Economics