A recent study shows that five years of cancer care for the elderly costs Medicare approximately $21.2 billion.  This staggering figure is expected to swell as the baby boomers age.  The study, which was based on costs generated by cancer patients diagnosed in 2004, reveals that the highest costs are incurred during the first 12 months after diagnosis. Joseph Lipscomb, a health policy researcher at Emory University in Atlanta, said the study is the first to combine cost estimates and survival data to arrive at long-term national estimates for 18 of the most common types of cancers in the elderly. In men, brain and nervous system cancers were measured to be the costliest, whereas in women, ovarian and lung cancers are the most expensive.   For the full findings, click here.

The cost of cancer care is rising fifteen percent a year, according to a recent MSNBC article. 

The price tag on cancer treatment is sending many patients, families, and even doctors into sticker shock.  Price of cancer treatment, primarily chemotherapy drugs, is now weighing heavily on patients' choice of care.  For example, two equally effective colon cancer drugs cost a difference of $60,000; whereas the cheaper causes hair loss, the more expensive can lead to nerve damage in hands.  According to many doctors, price is now considered a side-effect of drugs: when selecting treatments, patients consider the cost just as they would nausea, hair loss, and nerve damage, for example.   Dr. Neal J. Meropol of Philadelphia’s Fox Chase Cancer Center says he has seen patients calculate costs, such as a colon cancer patient who asked to switch from oral chemo to cheaper but more laborious intravenous chemo, or a woman who refused a pricey anti-nausea drug that would make her chemo more bearable.

The only up-side of rising cancer costs is drug companies' ability to donate medication to prescription-assistance programs that provide them for free to patients who otherwise couldn’t pay.  Programs like “Partnership for Prescription Assistance" have assisted about 5 million people since 2005 in obtaining costly care.

Prices are typically omitted from drug fact sheets, so doctors are sometimes unaware of the costs to patients. But because of the rising prices, doctors are now being trained in how to approach the matter of price with patients.