Prostate cancer patient anger at huge bills despite paying insurance

MEN with prostate cancer are being slugged with out-of-pocket expenses of up to $23,000 because Medicare and health funds don’t cover the full cost of their treatment.

A study of more than 900 men by Griffith University’s Health Institute found men were “left shocked and angry when they received huge bills even after paying insurance for 20 years”.

Even though around 70 per cent of the men in the study were private health fund members they were forced to raid their savings, ask family members for money and cut back mortgage payments to fund their treatment.

Around 20,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year and at the same time as they face hefty medical bills they need to take around a month off work while they are treated. Senior researcher Dr Louisa Gordon said failure to index the Medicare rebate to health care inflation was the reason for growing out-of-pocket expenses.

Medicare rebates no longer represented the realistic cost of professional medical care and treatment, and some doctors failed to warn patients of the costs they faced, she said. “The medical system, whether public or private, needs to become a lot more transparent and informative so people can make informed choices during a stressful time,” Dr Gordon said. Health Minister Tanya Plibersek dismissed concerns about rising out-of-pocket health expenses during the election health debate claiming bulk billing figures were high.

Government data showed many out-of-pocket expenses related to band aids and condoms, she told the National Press Club. The study, however, found doctors and specialist fees for prostate treatment average $13,000 but Medicare refunded just $8,664. An online study of 289 men who received prostate treatment in the last five years found those diagnosed after January 2012 had average out-of-pocket costs of $11,077.

Labor yesterday slammed Tony Abbott’s promise to abolish the means test on private health insurance subsidies within a decade claiming it would cost $1 billion a year to restore the payments. This would mean he’d have to cut funding to the states equivalent to the cost of more than 2700 hospital beds to restore a subsidy to very high income earners, Labor claims.

Prostate cancer treatment praised

Australia and New Zealand are among the best places in the world to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, according to a visiting US professor who says aggressive treatment is being avoided in many cases.

In many countries, a diagnosis of prostate cancer almost always leads to removal or radiation therapy. In Australia and New Zealand, however, many low-risk patients are being managed by active surveillance.This means they are monitored with regular blood tests, biopsies and MRIs and aggressive action is taken only if the disease becomes life-threatening. Visiting American professor James Eastham, who will address urologists at a conference in Melbourne on Monday, is full of praise for his colleagues in Australia and New Zealand. He says about one in three men who are newly diagnosed with prostate cancer are candidates for active surveillance. In Australia and New Zealand, about half of these are managed with active surveillance. This is well ahead of the US, where only about 10 per cent of eligible patients are managed by active surveillance. This leads to over-treatment. ‘I’m impressed. This is not the traditional way of treating cancer,’ said Prof Eastham, from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York. He will reassure the annual scientific meeting of the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand that the latest research from around the world suggests active surveillance is a safe and effective way to manage patients. ‘It maximises quality of life without compromising quantity of life.’ Prof Eastham also agrees with the society’s position on screening men at the age of 40. ‘We know testing saves lives,’ he says.