A Milliman study commissioned by the Community Oncology Alliance (COA) has found that overall costs for Medicare and commercial health plan populations have been increasing at the same rate as the cost of treating patients with cancer. This contradicts the popular notion that cancer care costs have far outpaced overall healthcare spending.

Will the cost of cancer care be unsustainable for healthcare in the United States? That seems to be the underlying question that the current study expected to answer. With a growing number of cancer survivors in the country (an estimated 14.5 million in 2014 according to the American Cancer Society, and rising)—thanks to longevity, earlier detection, and improved treatment options—long-term treatment and care could be a burden, especially considering the fact that a majority of innovative therapies are biologicals, and they don’t come cheap. Hovering around $124 billion in 2010, spending on cancer treatment is expected to touch $173 billion by 2020—a nearly 40% increase. Several policy issues have also been responsible for these growing costs, including rapid consolidation and shift in the site of care.

Acturial researchers at Milliman compared overall and component costs of care among cancer and non-cancer patient populations for the period between 2004 and 2014. When comparing claims data (Medicare and commercial) to generate per-patient costs of actively treated cancer patients and non-actively treated cancer patients during the same decade, the researchers found that:

1. Per-patient cost was similar between the cancer and non-actively treated cancer patients
2. With an increasing number of biologicals entering the oncology market, the per-patient cost of chemotherapy has been rising much more than other components of care for cancer patients.
3. There is an increasing trend of shift in the site of service—from lower-cost physician office to higher-cost hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs).

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