The cost-effectiveness of cancer care in the U.S. is less than in Western Europe, according to a new study. Results were published in Health Affairs [doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0174].
The authors collected cancer mortality rates from the World Health Organization’s cancer mortality database for people in the U.S. and 20 European countries between 1982 and 2010. They examined the rates for breast, colorectal, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukemia, lung, melanoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, prostate, stomach, testis and thyroid cancers.
To estimate the value of cancer care, they calculated the ratio of incremental costs to the number of life-years saved and the number of quality-adjusted life-years saved for all 12 cancer types.
The ratio of incremental cost to quality-adjusted life-years saved was $402,369 for breast cancer, $110,000 for colorectal cancer and $1,978,542 for prostate cancer, which the authors said exceeded most thresholds for cost-effective care.
The authors found that the U.S. averted the largest number of deaths for stomach and colorectal cancer and had the largest number of excess deaths for lung cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“Our results suggest that cancer care in the United States did not always avert deaths compared to Western Europe, and when it did avert deaths, it often did so at substantial cost,” the authors wrote.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.