Learn. Speak. Act
International recording artist and poet, Michael "MIKE-E" Ellison

Access to Care 101
Learn more about the access to health care issue, why it matters, and what the Society is doing about the problem.

Access to Care 201
This video illustrates the importance of providing access to health care for the uninsured and undersinsured and what the American Cancer Society is doing to help. It addresses some of the questions that have arisen since the organization's campaign began in September 2007.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why the Society Cares About Access to Care

Why is the American Cancer Society interested in access to health care?

Because winning the fight against cancer depends on improving access to quality health care. We’re making progress in the fight against cancer, but millions of Americans aren’t benefiting because they don’t have access to quality cancer prevention information, early detection, and treatment. Forty-seven million people in America are uninsured, and millions more are underinsured—their insurance fails to provide adequate coverage when they are diagnosed with cancer.

Recent evidence demonstrates that lack of adequate insurance directly affects cancer outcomes. Two studies published in the July 15, 2007, issue of the journal CANCER show that people who are uninsured are more likely to be diagnosed with advanced cancer, which requires harsher treatment and is more often fatal. These studies confirm our worst fears: The failings of our health care system are directly contributing to needless cancer suffering and death. That’s why we’ve made access to health care a key organizational priority.

Is access to care really an appropriate issue for the American Cancer Society to address?

The American Cancer Society has been working to help people gain access to quality health care through a number of initiatives for many years, including:

Offering assistance to patients struggling with insurance issues through our Health Insurance Assistance Service
Advocating for programs like the CDC’s National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Programs that offers free mammograms and follow up care to low income, underinsured and uninsured women.
Advocating against legislation that threatens insurance coverage requirements
Placing trained patient navigators in hospitals to help patients navigate the health care system
Building Hope Lodges near major cancer centers to offer patients and their families a place to stay free of charge when their treatment is far from home.

But these programs are not enough to ensure equal access to quality healthcare for all Americans. Given recent evidence and lives at stake, the American Cancer Society made the decision to focus greater awareness on this issue.

In general terms, how is the American Cancer Society looking to improve the U.S. health care system?

The American Cancer Society and its sister advocacy organization, ACS CAN, envision a health care system in which everyone has access to meaningful health insurance that is adequate, affordable, available, and administratively simple. For cancer patients, this is a system that fully covers prevention, early detection, treatment, and end-of-life care. By examining the system through the “cancer lens,” the Society and ACS CAN are spotlighting problems encountered by the more than 1.4 million Americans who are diagnosed with cancer each year. If we improve the health care system for cancer patients, we will improve it for millions of people with other life-threatening chronic diseases as well.

Will the Society or ACS CAN propose a specific solution to the problem of access to quality health care?

Neither the Society nor ACS CAN will offer a specific solution to fix our broken health care system. Our objective is to help define what the country needs and to encourage an open and productive dialogue about how to achieve it. The solution could be private, public or some combination of the two, but in any case, the answer should be squarely in the hands of the American people.

Isn’t the Society really advocating for “socialized medicine”?

The Society and ACS CAN are not advocating for “socialized medicine.” When we say that everyone deserves access to quality health care, we mean that every American should be able to obtain adequate and affordable health coverage, whether through a private system, a public system, or some combination of the two. The answer should be squarely in the hands of the American people, which is why we are educating the public about the issue and giving concerned citizens the tools they need to make informed decisions.

Wouldn’t the Society’s money be better spent on research to find a cure than on this campaign?

The American Cancer Society is and will continue to be the largest source of private cancer research funds in our country. Thanks in large part to Society-funded research, there are currently many proven ways to save lives from cancer such as early detection tests that find cancer at its earliest, most treatable stages and cancer treatments that offer cure for many people. Tragically, too many people do not have access to these lifesaving measures because of lack of insurance or costs not covered by insurance. With the current state of our health care system, the same will happen with any innovative new cancer discoveries that may result from the cancer research that we fund today.

Why does the American Cancer Society spend money on advertising?

The American Cancer Society has long history of educating the public on important cancer issues such as the dangers of smoking, the importance of healthy lifestyles and early detection tests in reducing cancer risk and the availability of services that help patients and their families. Advertising helps ensure that we reach the intended target audiences with these important messages. This year, we made the strategic decision to redirect the majority of these funds (which represent less than 2% of our revenues) to educate the public on a significant opportunity to save lives from cancer—greater access to quality health care.

Does this mean that you will stop educating people about cancer prevention and early detection?

The American Cancer Society will never stop encouraging people to take advantage of all of the measures proven to reduce cancer risk. We offer extensive information on cancer prevention and early detection through our national call center, Web site and our local offices. We offer cancer prevention a nd early detection guidelines to help people make informed decisions about the best ways to reduce cancer risk. We conduct proactive public education campaigns to encourage people to embrace healthy lifestyles and seek the appropriate early detection tests. The access to care initiative is intended to ensure that all Americans gain access to the very lifesaving cancer prevention and early detection measures we promote.

Is the American Cancer Society going to provide insurance coverage or financial assistance to people who are un- or under-insured?

No. The American Cancer Society does not offer health care insurance, and doesn’t have the means to provide all the people who need it with financial assistance. To address the health care crisis in America, the American Cancer Society and ACS CAN are working to educate Americans about the access to care issue, offering opportunities to speak up and share their experiences, and encouraging them to take action and advocate for changes in our health care system. In addition, the Society will continue to do what it does best to address the problems created by lack of access to quality cancer care: provide information about cancer prevention, early detection and treatment; offer answers to financial and insurance questions; help with transportation and lodging; offer hope and support from others who have been there; and fund researchers in the quest to understand the causes of cancer and its potential cures. ACS CAN will support legislation and policies at the federal, state, and local level that ensure more people have access to cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment.

Call 1-800-ACS-2345 or logon to www.cancer.org or www.acscan.org to learn more.

The Role of Advocacy in Access to Care

Why is the American Cancer Society engaged in politics and policy?

Our nation’s lawmakers play a critical role in reducing death from cancer. In the last two decades, the American Cancer Society has made enormous strides in the fight against cancer by advocating for increased government investment in cancer research, strong tobacco control policies that are proven to decrease smoking rates, screening and treatment programs that give low-income people access to prevention and early detection services, and other lifesaving policies. The Society created its sister advocacy organization, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), to build a nationwide grassroots army of cancer advocates who call upon government officials to support policies like these that help people prevent and fight cancer.

What is the difference between what the American Cancer Society and ACS CAN are doing about access to health care?

The American Cancer Society is a charitable organization. Our purpose is to educate the public about key issues that relate to our lifesaving mission of eliminating cancer as a major public health problem. The American Cancer Society Cancer Action NetworkSM (ACS CAN), can take political action on these same issues. ACS CAN lobbies for legislation that is relevant to the access issue, and it holds lawmakers accountable for their votes through comprehensive voter education campaigns.

Will the Society or ACS CAN endorse any candidate’s health plan?

No. The American Cancer Society and ACS CAN are nonpartisan organizations. Because we do not endorse candidates or political parties, we also will not endorse or oppose a health care plan offered by any candidate.

Will the Society or ACS CAN endorse pending legislative proposals for health care reform?

The Society has developed a series of threshold questions that must be answered in the evaluation of any legislative proposal. They are

Does the proposal contain the essential components of availability, adequacy, affordability, and administrative simplicity?
Does the reform plan reduce or eliminate segmentation of the health insurance market?
Is the overall proposed financing realistic and adequate to sustain the proposed reforms?

The Society and ACS CAN will use these questions to evaluate active legislative proposals and may choose to endorse or oppose such proposals.

How do the Society and ACS CAN plan to engage the public on this issue?

One of the primary goals of this public education campaign is to educate Americans about the extent of the access to care problem and to motivate them to take action in support of change. We want Americans to research their own health care plans to determine the extent of their coverage should they be diagnosed with cancer. We also want Americans to ask hard questions of the presidential candidates about whether their health care reform proposals would adequately cover people with cancer. And after the 2008 elections, we want Americans to join us in demanding that a new president make this issue his or her most important priority.

With this public education campaign, we hope to create an environment in which the person elected president in 2008 will be compelled to address the access to care problem as the first order of business in his or her administration.

What grassroots efforts are planned in support of this campaign?

Our advertisements point the public to the Society’s Web site, www.cancer.org, where we invite visitors to learn more about the issue, to speak out by sharing their stories and opinions, and to take action by calling on elected officials at all levels of government to make access to quality care a top priority. Visitors who select this third option will be taken to the ACS CAN Web site (www.acscan.org), where they can sign an Access to Care Petition that asks the candidates for president to make the access issue a top priority in their administration. The petitions will be delivered to the presidential candidates during the campaign.

Other grassroots efforts include:

Candidate tracking—Advocates are informing the presidential candidates about our principles for quality health care and encouraging an open and explicit conversation about the candidates’ plans to improve the health care system.
ACS CAN Cancer Promise—Advocates are encouraging their federal and state elected officials to sign the ACS CAN Cancer Promise, which outlines short-term steps, such as adequate funding for cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment programs, that must be taken to get our country back on track toward winning the war on cancer.
ACS CAN Bus Tour—Next spring, ACS CAN will launch a nationwide bus tour that will call attention to the need to improve access to quality health care. The bus, which will visit every state in the continental U.S., will educate citizens about the critical need to take action and encourage lawmakers to find a solution to the health care crisis.

What advocacy activities are the Society and ACS CAN already leading in support of improved access to care?

In addition to the public education campaign on access to care, the Society and ACS CAN are continuing their ongoing efforts in support of specific legislative priorities that address the access to care crisis, such as:

Increasing the federal investment in medical research at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute at a pace that at a minimum keeps up with medical inflation
Giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the broad authority to regulate the sale, advertising, manufacture and distribution of tobacco products
Boosting state tobacco excise taxes and calling for Congress to increase the federal tobacco tax to fund an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program
Fully funding the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program and related treatment programs at the state level, so uninsured and underinsured women have access to lifesaving cancer screenings
Supporting similar early detection and treatment programs at the federal and state level for colorectal cancer

Our public education campaign on access to care adds to the urgency of all of these efforts. Our message to the public is that voters have a critical role to play in improving the health care system, and we invite them to join us in the effort.

General Questions About Access to Care

Health care reform was attempted in the early 1990s and failed. Why is this point in time any different?

Improving health care is hugely important to our country. Forty-seven million people do not have coverage, millions more have too little coverage, and many who do have good coverage do not obtain quality care because of excessive costs. If we want to succeed in saving lives from cancer, we have to improve the access and delivery of care for all Americans. The fact that reform has been tried before and failed is no reason to quit. People told us we could never change Americans’ views on tobacco – but we have, and over time, smoking rates have fallen dramatically. We believe that by educating the public and elevating the debate on this issue, the Society and ASC CAN will help to define clear goals for reforming the system and set the stage for real action.

I’m healthy. Why should this issue matter to me?

Access to quality cancer care is an issue that should matter to everyone—no matter their health status. In addition to the obvious human and economic toll cancer takes on our nation, it is also the health care issue of greatest personal concern for most Americans.

To stay healthy, even the healthiest person needs to know what they can do to reduce their risk of cancer and other diseases, and to be able to get the recommended tests to detect cancer and other diseases early. Based on your age and other risk factors, the American Cancer Society and other medical experts recommend a specific regimen of screening tests that can help detect any potential cancer problems early, and in some cases prevent them altogether. Adequate health insurance that covers the full range of prevention and early detection services is crucial to your ability to maintain your good health.

How many people are uninsured or underinsured?

According to US Census Bureau data, more than 47 million people in America are uninsured. At least 17 million adults are underinsured, meaning their insurance does not adequately protect them against catastrophic health care expenses.
[Source: Banthin JS, Bernard DM. Changes in financial burdens for health care: National estimates for the population younger than 65 years, 1996 to 2003. JAMA 2006; 296: 2712-19.]

In addition, one in ten cancer patients under age 65 does not have health insurance.
[Source: Thorpe KE, Howard D. Health insurance and spending among cancer patients. Health Aff. 2003; W3-189.]

What are the effects of inadequate health insurance on people’s lives?

Lack of adequate insurance coverage puts many healthy people at higher risk for being diagnosed with cancer at a later stage. Too many people—including many who are insured but not adequately covered—are foregoing early detection testing. In addition, the inadequately insured may experience limits to their benefits which can interrupt or delay treatment, or force awful financial choices including bankruptcy. Financially, they experience high or multiple co-pays and limits on number of treatments, visits to the doctors, and prescriptions to name a few.

For those diagnosed with cancer, the financial repercussions can be catastrophic. Among those who were insured during their illness, 22 percent reported having used up all or most of their savings to pay for treatments; seven percent were unable to pay for basic necessities like food, heat, or housing; and three percent declared bankruptcy. Among uninsured cancer patients, 46 percent reported having used up all or most of their savings to pay for treatments; 41 percent have been unable to pay for basic necessities, including food, heat, or housing; and six percent declared bankruptcy.
[Source: The Experiences of Families Affected by Cancer: A USA Today/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health Report, November 2006]

How do I know if my insurance is adequate?

The best way to determine if you’re adequately insured is to become familiar with your health plan. Contact the plan administrator and ask for the “summary plan description” to learn about your policy. Are the premiums affordable? Consider lifetime maximums, deductibles, and prescription coverage.

Why don’t people have access to health care?

People have inadequate access to quality health care for a variety of reasons. Some are uninsured because they are unemployed, their employer doesn’t offer health benefits, or they simply can’t afford costly premiums. Others have insurance that doesn’t cover the full range of prevention, early detection, and treatment options that should be available to everyone. Still others are deemed “uninsurable” because of existing health conditions.