Calculating the Cost of Cancer

After my most recent post on the cost associated with my cancer treatment (Yikes!), it occurred to me that I should perhaps be keeping better track of the bills -- and potentially sharing the information. If the intent of this blog is to document my "cancer experience," well, the dollars are certainly part of that. As I think about it, the cancer treatment centers -- SCCA, Group Health and Swedish alike -- all did a really good job of communicating what to expect from the treatment, and where to go for various types of assistance, but what they don't do is tell you, "You're about to receive some of the biggest bills you'll likely ever see in your life."

So for any future cancer patients out there reading this let me just say, "I'm so sorry to hear about your diagnosis, and I hate to add to your troubles, but you're about to receive some of the biggest bills you'll likely ever see in your life."

I find it sort of interesting that the service providers don't state this up front. Following my post, I had an exchange with Sib1 about what my Mum experienced when her last cancer treatment started up. Even more than me, Mum was taking a palliative-only approach to her cancer, without any chemo or other attempts to treat the disease. But, as I've found, even not doing much comes with some serious costs. And by this point Mum was retired and on a fixed income. According to Sib1, the bills she received basically sent her into a panic. Now eventually insurance did its thing, adjustments were made, and it all got sorted out, but you'd think providers could figure out someway to reach that end point without the initial panic. Hell, most of these places offer massage and a host of other services to help you deal with the stress of being treated for cancer. Wouldn't it then make sense not to exacerbate that stress with the way billing is managed?

The thing of it is, when you're first diagnosed, and you get that fight or flight response, and the doctors and everyone around you are telling you to fight, you ramp yourself up and convince yourself that you will spare no expense in fighting the disease.

But it's easy to say that you'll spare no expense when you don't have a number defining that expense. And if you're like me, you're thinking, well, how much can it be? Quite a bit it turns out. I'm nine months in the cost of my treatment -- not my share but the total cost -- has already exceeded $100,000. That's an awfully big number, and certainly a bigger number than I ever thought possible -- stupid me -- when I was first diagnosed.

So thinking it might help others if I share my numbers (as well as highlighting the absurdity of how medical care is billed and paid in America), I've created a page with the same title as this post where I've posted a simple spreadsheet roughly showing the costs for my treatment. There's a link to it over on the right. 

And for the record, I should've stuck with Group Health. Oh well...