Dealing with the high cost of cancer

There's a cancer awareness month for 11 out of 12 months. In fact, there are more cancers we're being made aware of than there are months.

For example, November is national lung cancer, carcinoid cancer, pancreatic cancer and stomach cancer month, with an awareness for family caregivers thrown into the mix. Thursday is the Great National Smokeout, the one day devoted each year for smokers to go cold turkey and quit smoking.

Back when I was a smoker, I took the day off from smoking but resumed puffing vigorously the next day. I didn't quit until we had Eli and he was coughing in his crib as I sat smoking on the living room couch next to an ashtray full of cigarette butts. There was a news report on about second-hand smoke, and as I looked next to me and heard my infant son, I decided it was time to quit.

I did, cold turkey. That's not to say that well past a quarter-century since that decision I don't sometimes still get a craving, I just learned how to handle it through the years. Cold turkey is tough, but if you want to quit smoking I encourage you to try, whether you start Thursday or on another day of your choosing. Or at least find a substitute for that hand-to-mouth motion and the oral fixation smoking satisfies as you try to become nicotine-free.

But it's not so much smoking cessation that's on my mind as it is cancer in general, and the high cost of cancer. Of course, the highest cost is in lives lost to cancer and the lives it disrupts. I began thinking about it at the special night honoring Bob Ketchum last weekend, which also was an occasion to help raise funds for him and his family to deal with medical expenses in his battle against cancer. Just the day before, another friend received word that she is cancer-free after months of fighting breast cancer. And a week before that a friend I have through Facebook lost her husband after a lengthy, painful duel with cancer.

All of us are touched by cancer, either as a patient or the family and friends of someone smitten by the disease. The National Program of Cancer Registries of the Centers for Disease Control reports one of every four deaths in the United States is due to cancer — that's 25 percent of the deaths in America.

The American Cancer Society estimates that this year more than 1.6 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer, and almost 600,000 will die. That's not including in situcancers or more than 1 million cases of basal and squamous cell skin cancers expected to be diagnosed this year.

You'd think with the billions spent on cancer research through the decades there would be cures for the disease; not just outrageously priced treatments, but cures. The federal government helps fund cancer research, innumerable private organizations raise funds for cancer research, and every time you turn around somebody is looking for donations for cancer research.

In 2013, the federal government funded $4.8 billion for cancer research, according to the National Cancer Institute. The average for the past six years was $4.9 billion, which totals about $30 billion for cancer research. In contrast, the federal government spent $1.7 trillion in 10 years as of 2013 for the war in Iraq. You have to wonder how farther along research for cures could have been had at least a portion of that still-growing war expenditure been allocated for it instead.

Private organizations help raise money for cancer research. The Stand Up to Cancer telethon in September raised a reported $109 million, according to The Associated Press. The Susan G. Komen Foundation spent $58 million for breast cancer research — which tops the list of funding — while the Lustgarten Foundation funded $13 million for pancreatic cancer research.

All that's a lot of money, but nothing compared to the cost of treating cancer. According to the National Institutes of Health, in 2009 the estimated overall annual cost of cancer was about $216.6 billion — $86.6 billion in direct medical costs and $130 billion in indirect costs. And the cost is steadily rising — as is cancer — with national cancer care accounting for $124.6 billion in medical expenses in 2010.

I know of one cancer treatment that reportedly has extreme side effects on patients, and one injection costs $150,000. And one dose is never enough for treatment. Insurance companies don't like to pay for treatments like those and so-called experimental treatments, leaving patients with basically two options — crushing debt, or death.(I believe if a treatment is considered experimental it should be provided free since the patient, in essence, becomes part of the research.)

When you add up the government funding and all the different fundraisers for cancer research you get a considerable amount of money. Of course, there's also a lot of expense involved in running and promoting those fundraising corporations as well as the research organizations, which channels off some of those donations for the operating costs. To be honest, while those various organizations have honorable goals, they seem to have grown into self-perpetuating entities, and that makes self-preservation as much of an objective as research.

In other words, cancer treatment and research is a multibillion-dollar industry keeping many, many people employed and providing profits for corporate entities, universities and other organizations. Were I a believer in conspiracy theories, I might be tempted to believe there's more interest in continuing research than actually finding cures. Especially if, in the long run, research proves more profitable than cures.

In addition to increasing our awareness through the year of 26 different forms of cancer, and trying to raise money for research, people need to start pressing the many fundraisers and researchers and the government to show more results in their efforts and devote more of their efforts to developing cures instead of waging war and corporate self-preservation.