Breast cancer treatment is expensive. These are the costs you may face after a diagnosis—with and without insurance coverage. In many instances, a diagnosis will start you on a course of regular expenses that include office visits, lab work, and prescription medication.
Sadly, this figure is the norm rather than the exception, and the huge expense is leading patients to skip or completely forego treatment. Medication is only part of the problem. Many who are diagnosed in later stages need chemotherapy. Additionally, many people need medication and chemotherapy at the same time. Some women need a mastectomy to treat breast cancer. This surgery is expensive on its own, and is frequently paired with chemotherapy.
Most health insurance providers help cover cancer treatment. However, every insurance plan is different. The best way to know what your plan includes is to speak with your insurance provider.
One of the main components of cancer treatment is frequent checkups with specialists. This includes specialists like oncologists. In most cases, insurance providers partially cover the expense of each visit.
Depending on your plan, the fee might be a dollar amount co-pay or percentage co-insurance. Your copay or coinsurance might be listed on your health insurance card. Your doctor might perform laboratory tests, like blood or urine tests, as part of cancer treatment. Typically, the fees for these tests are billed directly from the laboratory. Your insurance provider may cover part or all these costs. The group of healthcare professionals managing your care might use imaging tests to monitor your progress.
This includes tests like:. Also, if you have to stay in the hospital, you might have to pay a fee per hospital admission or day. Medicare covers chemotherapy , plus other cancer treatments, according to Medicare. Medicare Part A covers costs related to a hospital inpatient stay.
Medicare Part B provides coverage for treatment in outpatient settings, like an office or clinic. There are many programs that provide support and care for people with cancer. These groups can connect you to other individuals with similar experiences.
You may be able to find cancer support groups at your local hospital or online. You can also search for programs in your area on the following websites:. The largest variations were seen when comparing insurer costs. According to Giordano, this study was limited by its focus on a younger population with private health insurance. Patients lacking private insurance may face significantly higher costs of care. Additionally, researchers were unable to include the costs of newer therapies in the current study.
Finally, the study relied on insurance claims, which may include some misclassifications, and was not able to use cancer registry data to analyze cancer stage, patient race or ethnicity, or tumor characteristics. The researchers plan to continue work with available and future data to better understand the relative value of cancer care options. My Chart. Donate Today. For Physicians. Cancer Moonshots. Summer Cost of chemo for breast cancer varies widely.
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