Cancer screenings up as Affordable Care Act lowers financial barriers
ACA removes financial barriers for low-income people
Screening for colorectal cancer increased in lower socioeconomic status (SES) individuals after 2008, perhaps reflecting the Affordable Care Act’s removal of financial barriers to screening according to a new analysis. The study, by American Cancer Society investigators, appears online in the journal Cancer.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) included a cost-sharing provision intended to reduce financial barriers for preventive services, including screening for colorectal cancer (CRC) and breast cancer (BC). To investigate whether that provision has affected screening rates, researchers led by Stacey Fedewa, MPH used data from the National Health Interview Survey to compare CRC and BC screening prevalence among privately and Medicare-insured adults by socioeconomic status (SES) before and after the ACA. They included responses from 15,786 adults ages 50 to 75 in the CRC screening analysis and 14,530 women age 40 and older in the BC screening analysis.