health insurance – Oral Cancer News

Health Insurers Are Vacuuming Up Details About You — And It Could Raise Your Rates

Source: National Public Radio Author: Marshall Allen To an outsider, the fancy booths at a June health insurance industry gathering in San Diego, Calif., aren't very compelling: a handful of companies pitching "lifestyle" data and salespeople touting jargony phrases like "social determinants of health." But dig deeper and the implications of what they're selling might give many patients pause: a future in which everything you do — the things you buy, the food you eat, the time you spend watching TV — may help determine how much you pay for health insurance. With little public scrutiny, the health insurance industry has joined forces with data brokers to vacuum up personal details about hundreds of millions of Americans, including, odds are, many readers of this story. The companies are tracking your race, education level, TV habits, marital status, net worth. They're collecting what you post on social media, whether you're behind on your bills, what you order online. Then they feed this information into complicated computer algorithms that spit out predictions about how much your health care could cost them. Are you a woman who recently changed your name? You could be newly married and have a pricey pregnancy pending. Or maybe you're stressed and anxious from a recent divorce. That, too, the computer models predict, may run up your medical bills. Are you a woman who has purchased plus-size clothing? You're considered at risk of depression. Mental health care can be expensive. Low-income and a minority? That means, the data [...]

Charlotte Parker2018-07-17T09:40:59-07:00July, 2018|OCF In The News|

This drug treatment costs $84,000 and the US health-care system can’t make it any more affordable

Source: vox.comAuthor: Sarah Kliff The first thing Philip Mason noticed was the hair loss. The 73-year-old retiree, a former computer programmer, began shedding hair from his arms, legs, everywhere on his body. "It just all came right off," he said. After the hair loss came weight loss; Mason dropped from 150 to 125 pounds. He felt weak and sick. Mason, who is blind and already used a white cane to get around, began having falls. He switched to a walker for more stability. Mason went to the doctor and discovered he had Hepatitis C. He had contracted the disease through sex with an ex-boyfriend. And when he received his diagnosis three years ago, the prognosis wasn't good. He already had renal insufficiency, a chronic condition in which the kidneys become increasingly weak and unable to process urine. After the diagnosis of Hepatitis C, which weakens liver function, Mason's doctor recommended a transplant. Mason declined. "I told my doctor I was already old, and worried about what my quality of life would be like after the transplant," he said. “I wish I could say I was optimistic that the future would be different, and prices would moderate” So Mason lived with his Hepatitis C, the hair loss, the weight loss, the walker, and the falls, until this past February. That's when his doctor at the Whitman Walker Clinic in Washington, DC, asked if he wanted to try a new Hepatitis C drug called Sovaldi. It had just come on the market a [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-12-03T12:37:03-07:00December, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Health Insurance providers still take advantage of consumers despite Obamacare

Source: huffingtonpost.comAuthor: Jeffrey Young No law has done more to reform health insurance and protect consumers against the industry's most heinous practices than the Affordable Care Act. But Obamacare didn't magically transform insurers into benevolent entities solely devoted to taking care of sick people. Health insurance companies, even those that are not-for-profit, have to collect more money in premiums than they shell out in claims for medical care. That means they have a financial incentive not to pay for things. And since health insurance companies can no longer shun the sick to maximize profits -- either by denying coverage to people based on their medical histories or by rescinding the policies of paying customers who fall ill and rack up bills -- insurers are employing other tactics to shift costs to sick people and make it harder to get health care, consumer advocates say. "One of the things that occurred to me, even as the bill was working its way through Congress, was that once it was passed, insurers would do all they could to try to preserve profit margins," said Wendell Potter, a former Cigna executive turned industry critic. Here are a few of the tactics that consumers and advocates have complained about: Refusing to pay for medical care that should be covered Nothing in Obamacare says insurance companies have to pay any bill that comes their way. That's fine, because doctors and patients want things all the time that are wasteful and unnecessary, and everyone shares the cost for that. Zoë Keating is a [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-07-21T15:37:51-07:00July, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Democrat Shelly Leonard, Former House District Candidate, Fights Cancer Again

Source: TampaBay By: Mike Brassfield, Times Staff Writer CLEARWATER — When she ran against incumbent state Rep. Ed Hooper last year, Shelly Leonard wasn't your typical candidate. She was a 37-year-old single mother — and a survivor of oral cancer. The feisty Democrat made her cancer history a part of her stump speech, talking about the need to make health insurance accessible to more people. "My tongue is scarred," she would say on the campaign trail, "but I have a strong voice." More than 16,000 people voted for her in Clearwater-based House District 50. But nearly 24,000 voted to keep Republican Hooper in office, so Leonard went back to her job as a social worker. Now she's facing some bad news. Leonard's oral cancer has returned. She's scheduled to undergo major surgery today at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. "She's having surgery to remove four malignant tumors," said her friend and campaign treasurer, Van Farber. "After they remove the tumors, there's a question of how much of her tongue will be left after surgery — will she be able to talk in her normal voice, or just a whisper?" As tough as that is, it's actually an improvement over what her prognosis had been. As recently as six weeks ago, Leonard was told that her tumors were so large, she could lose part of her chin and some of her teeth and would need significant reconstructive surgery. "The most positive thing is, her tumors have shrunk since then," Farber said. [...]

Charlotte Parker2011-09-02T10:43:31-07:00September, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Cancer death rate gap widens based on education

Source: apnews.myway.com Author: Mike Stobbe The gap in cancer death rates between college graduates and those who only went to high school is widening, the American Cancer Society reported Friday. Among men, the least educated died of cancer at rates more than 2 1/2 times that of men with college degrees, the latest data show. In the early 1990s, they died at two times the rate of most-educated men. For women, the numbers aren't as complete but suggest a widening gap also. The data, from 2007, compared people between the ages of 25 and 64. People with college degrees are seeing a significant drop in cancer death rates, while people who have spent less time in school are seeing more modest improvements or sometimes none at all, explained Elizabeth Ward, who oversees research done by the cancer society. The cancer society estimates there will be nearly 1.6 million new cancer cases in the United States this year, and 571,950 deaths. It also notes that overall cancer death rates have been dropping since the early 1990s, but the decline has been greater for some groups more than others. Experts believe that the differences have to do with education, how much people earn and where they live, among other factors. Researchers like to use education as a measuring stick because death certificates include that information. "Just because we're measuring education doesn't mean we think education is the direct reason" for the differences among population groups, Ward said. That said, the cancer death [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-06-17T06:43:24-07:00June, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Insurance tied to survival odds in head/neck cancers

Source: www.reuters.com Author: staff People with cancers of the head or neck seem to have better survival odds if they have private health insurance, research hints. Head and neck cancers include cancers of the mouth, throat, nasal cavity, salivary glands and lymph nodes of the neck. Most cases are linked to smoking, with excessive drinking being the other major risk factor. But while those habits may raise the odds of developing head and neck cancers, the new findings, reported in the journal Cancer, suggest that insurance coverage influences the odds of surviving. Researchers found that among more than 1,200 patients treated at the Pittsburgh Medical Center between 1998 and 2007, those with private insurance had better survival rates than those with no insurance, as well as patients on Medicaid or Medicare disability. Medicaid is the federal health insurance program for the poor; Medicare disability covers people younger than 65 who cannot work because of a serious disability or illness. In this study, patients who were uninsured or on Medicaid were 50 percent more likely to die than privately insured patients. Those on Medicare disability had a 69 percent higher risk of dying -- with factors such as age, race, income and smoking and drinking history taken into account. Instead, the poorer survival seemed to be partly explained by later diagnosis. People without private insurance generally had more-advanced cancer by the time they saw a doctor, according to the researchers, led by Joseph Kwok of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-01-09T12:33:50-07:00January, 2010|Oral Cancer News|