People diagnosed with cancer who live in US counties where more residents carry medical debt in collections were more likely to be diagnosed at stage IV and had poorer survival than patients in counties with the least medical debt, according to an American Cancer Society analysis of more than 7.5 million patients published in JNCCN, the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
The finding is an association, not proof that debt causes late diagnosis. But it is one of the largest attempts yet to connect a financial condition of a place to the medical outcome of the people living there, and the pattern held across major cancer types and across socioeconomic and clinical subgroups.
