A new study concludes that the unavailability of health insurance prior to Medicaid enrollment may contribute to poor outcomes in the Medicaid-insured cancer population.
The study, published in the April 15, 2005 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, says the poorest outcomes are among cancer patients who enroll in Medicaid after diagnosis. These individuals were likely uninsured prior to diagnosis and as such had been on the margins of the health care system for some time. Medicaid requires that individuals have both a disabling condition and low income and assets. Therefore, many of those enrolling in Medicaid after diagnosis have late stage cancers. The authors say their findings have far reaching implications for Medicaid's enrollment policies.
Recent studies demonstrate that access to healthcare alone does not improve survival rates for many cancers. A recent study showed, for instance, that Medicaid-supported breast cancer patients have similarly poor outcomes to uninsured patients. However, there is little research to explain the surprising lack of survival differences between Medicaid and uninsured patients. To further examine the contribution of Medicaid's policies in cancer outcome, Cathy Bradley, Ph.D. of Michigan State University and her colleagues reviewed the records of 13,740 subjects from the Michigan Tumor Registry.