For the young and uninsured, cancer diagnosis often comes late

Adolescents and young adults who do not have health insurance are more likely than those who have private insurance to be diagnosed with cancer after it has spread to other parts of the body – when it is more deadly and harder to treat. The researchers found that the uninsured were one and one-half times more likely than the privately insured to be diagnosed with cancer that had spread. The outcome was worse for uninsured females, who were nearly twice as likely as their privately insured counterparts to get a distant-stage cancer diagnosis. Read more here.

Study mentioned: Robbins AS, et al. Insurance status and distant-stage disease at diagnosis among adolescent and young adult patients with cancer aged 15 to 39 years: National Cancer Data Base, 2004 through 2010. Cancer. 2014 Jan 28. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 24474656