UH Case Medical Center study finds that eliminating cost for colorectal cancer screening doesn’t improve screening rates

Thursday, December 17, 2015
CLEVELAND — Making colonoscopy available at no cost to eligible Medicare beneficiaries under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) did not increase the number of people in this target population who regularly undergo the procedure, says a new large scale national study from University Hospitals Case Medical Center Seidman Cancer Center. Interestingly, the same analysis found that rates of routine mammography significantly increased following the ACA’s mandate for low or no cost screenings for Medicare recipients.
 
“It was long assumed that cost was a major prohibitive factor for why people didn’t get screened. So the Affordable Care Act made an effort to reduce or remove costs for several highly successful screening and recommended procedures, including mammography and colonoscopy,” said study lead author Gregory Cooper, MD, Co-Program Leader for Cancer Prevention and Control, UH Seidman Cancer Center and Professor, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. “This data shows that doing so still doesn’t necessarily guarantee the patients who should be screened will be. Other factors clearly play a role and need to be addressed as well.”

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