Young adults who don't have healthcare insurance are more likely to be diagnosed with and die from cancer than those who have it.
Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act (ACA), could help improve these cancer outcomes in young people, many of which were previously uninsured, a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute news release reported.
"We found that patients who have insurance coverage do better on every measure," Ayal Aizer, MD, MHS, of the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program said in the news release.
Research suggests that 11.3 of covered individuals had metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis compared with 18.5 percent of uninsured patients. This means that insured people have a 16 percent greater chance of having "potentially-curable" cancer.
Insured patients were about twice as likely to receive "definitive therapy" such as radiation or surgery for their cancer.
To make their findings researchers looked at the records of 39,447 cancer patients between the ages of 20 and 40 years old.
About 93 percent of these patients were insured, but 2,578 did not have coverage. The uninsured patients younger non-white males.
"Overall, the ACA is going to improve health coverage for young people, but we can't forget about some young people who may feel they can't afford the premiums," Paul Nguyen, MD, of Radiation Oncology at DF/BWCC, said in the news release.
"Extra consideration will need to be given to ensure that at-risk patients can obtain insurance coverage under the ACA," the researchers wrote in their report, the news release reported.
Premium costs for young adults who purchased insurance from the individual market may go up. These individuals often lack employer sponsorship. The ACA allows individuals to be covered under their parents' health plan until the age of 26, and federal subsidies can be used to help pay the premium costs of low-earning individuals.
