Book Review
“The Cancer Generation: Baby Boomers Facing a Perfect Storm,” by John Geyman, M.D. Common Courage Press, 2009. Softcover, 303 pp., $18.95.
By A.R. Strobeck Jr.
In “The Cancer Generation,” Dr. John Geyman, physician and professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of Washington, focuses on the baby boomer generation in the United States and the virtual tsunami of cancer cases that is expected to hit this 79.5-million-member demographic as more of its members move into their “golden years.”
Geyman says he aims to examine “the changing landscape of cancer in the U.S., including the extent to which the marketplace fails patients with cancer care.” He takes a hard look at how well the present state of cancer care – particularly the financing of medical services – measures up to the task of providing quality, compassionate care to those who need it.
While he draws upon the latest academic research and the book is heavily footnoted, the material is presented in a popular, accessible way, including with the abundant use of tables and graphs.
The picture he draws is not pretty. The author believes that the outlook for cancer care is bleak, largely due to the unregulated “free market” economic policies that have come to dictate both access to, and delivery of, health care in the U.S. These policies have given rise to an astronomical increase in the costs of cancer care, with treatment costs are now rising by 20 percent each year. The rising costs are putting effective care out of reach of millions.
This problem is expected to worsen, the author says, noting that the Institute of Medicine projects the number of cancer cases will double between 2000 and 2050. Meanwhile, the annual cost of treating cancer is projected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2023, more than five times what we spend today.
As a result, the aging of the U.S. population “will lead to an increasing cancer burden, both for individuals and their families as well as for the health care system itself.”
Geyman acknowledges that treatments for cancer have improved, and today’s care can be effective in many cases. He points to the dramatic increase in the survival rate among children diagnosed with cancer, for example.
But lack of health insurance, or poor quality insurance, prevents people from getting access to and obtaining proper care. The chief culprit here, he says, is the private health insurance industry, which is more concerned with increasing its profits than in assuring access to care.
More generally, however, he believes that our present market-driven health care system cannot meet the coming surge in cancer cases without drastic changes in its structure, access, delivery and methods of financing.
Geyman sees a blind faith in technology in the U.S. as fueling an explosion of new technologies, even though there is much uncertainty as to the safety and efficacy of these innovations. Unfortunately, he asserts, due to the high stakes that come with cancer, patients facing it are “especially vulnerable to accepting treatment at whatever the risks or costs.” Thus the marketplace is “setting cancer policy by default,” i.e. most of our health care dollars are going into treatment and far too little into prevention.
Cancer survivors face special challenges, he writes. They are less likely to be employed. They face three kinds of barriers to care thrown in their way by private insurance: availability, affordability and adequacy. And if these barriers are not enough, private insurance companies sometimes will go to even greater lengths to deny coverage to those afflicted.
Survivors lucky enough to have insurance face much higher co-payments. In addition, insurance firms try to cap coverage or otherwise place limits on the amount of treatment. As a result, a cancer diagnosis is often a prelude to financial crisis and bankruptcy.
Cancer survivors without insurance often find it difficult to see a doctor or to have a regular source of care. Geyman notes that it is no wonder that uninsured and Medicaid patients often have cancer at a more advanced stage when it is diagnosed. In addition, most cancer survivors often have serious co-morbidities such as heart disease or diabetes, which also go untreated at a disproportionately higher rate.
Geyman argues that everyone needs accessibility to doctors if the mortality rate of cancer is to be reduced. Unfortunately, the policies of the private health insurance industry are heading in the opposite direction, leading to uncontrolled inflation of costs; growing unaffordability of premiums; decreasing levels of coverage; a bloated bureaucracy, contributing to the waste of 31 cents of every U.S. health care dollar on administrative costs; a shrinking market of only 59 percent of employers now offering health insurance; ineffective state and federal regulation; and growing insecurity and hardship in the general population.
Racial disparities also continue to take a heavy toll: for example, cancer mortality rates are 35 percent higher for African Americans than whites.
What’s his prescription for a cure? As step No. 1, Geyman recommends establishing a public health insurance system such as single-payer Medicare for All. Such a system would provide health care services “based on medical need, not ability to pay, ” and would “eliminate much of the inefficiency and waste of the private insurance industry and actually cost employers and individuals less than we are already paying for insurance and health care.”
He outlines additional measures like establishing a national, evidence-based clinical effectiveness program; more funding for cancer research; and the strengthening of the nation’s cancer workforce, especially in primary care and geriatric oncology.
Finally, Geyman reminds us of the ethical issues surrounding cancer care, citing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when he said, “Of all forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and most inhuman…. Although social change cannot come overnight, we must always work as though it were a possibility in the morning.”
Reading and acting on this book will help bring about that better day.
A.R. Strobeck Jr. worked for many years in health care administration. He resides in Chicago.