It would cost Medicare $2 billion a year to follow recent advice to offer these lung scans — and fuel angst about rising health costs that are borne by everyone, not just smokers, the study found.
Joshua Roth of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle said the researchers merely were tallying the cost of screening, and were not "judging value" or saying whether Medicare should pay it. He led the study, which was released Wednesday and will be presented at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference later this month.
Lung cancer is the world's top cancer killer, mainly because it's usually found too late for treatment to do much good. Most deaths involve Medicare-age people, and most are due to smoking.
Recently, a major study found that annual CT scans, a type of X-ray, could cut the chances of dying from lung cancer by up to 20 percent in those most at risk — people ages 55 through 79 who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years or the equivalent, such as two packs a day for 15 years.
Based largely on that, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in December recommended screening that group, about 10 million Americans. The scans cost $100 to as much as $400. Under the new health care law, cancer screenings recommended by the task force are to be covered with no copays.
[via - startribune.com]