VonTasia Ingram
Professor DeLacruz
Cancer Treatment Expenses
In 2009 a loving mother and wife, a hard working nurse and a wonderful friend was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer, devastating her two children and husband. She battled it with the treatments for as she could but eventually she had to quit her job, which brought home the bulk of the money in their household. Eventually her treatment became very aggressive and her husband had to quit his job and trashman. Leaving their household with no income. Medical bills eventually started to put this family in grave debt. After 10 months of treatment, she died. Leaving her husband a unemployed widower with two kids that were under the age of 13. Not even a month after her death, more…show more content… Which then left the husband no other option than to file for bankruptcy after not even being able to pay an eighth of the debt his wife left him with. Soon after he was forced to uproot his family into low income housing in a terrible neighborhood because he could no longer support his family, pay the medical expenses and stay in the upper middle class neighborhood they were in before his wife died. Cancer tore this family apart, physically and financially. It is now 2018 and the husband is just getting a handle on things financially. This is just one of the thousands of stories just like it. The financial burden of cancer can be substantial for patients and their families. Between 40 percent and 85 percent of cancer patients stop working during initial treatment, with absences ranging from forty-five days to nearly six months, which can ultimately lead to the patient having to quit if things progress. This causes the families to lose income in the household. Which can lead to bankruptcy. No one should have to fret about going into debt or…show more content… The average working person only makes $2,500 a month. Cancer treatment cost four times the amount the average person makes a month. Even if people were to opt out of the really expensive treatments they would still have to have the basics just to live, which are still very expensive. According to Tonia Smith, writer for Project Purple, medical debt is one of the top reasons that people declare bankruptcy in the United States and cancer patients declare bankruptcy 2.5 times more often than healthy people. Using 2012 survey data from 4,719 cancer survivors ages 18 to 64, Dr. Matthew P. Banegas at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon and colleagues found that one-third had gone into debt because of cancer, and in more than half of those cases, the debt was above $10,000. Three percent had filed for
