Minorities most vulnerable to financial slide after breast cancer

By Kathryn Doyle NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Black and Latina breast cancer patients were more than twice as likely as white women to have lingering medical debt and to skip treatments because of costs, according to a new U.S. study. “Although we were able to control for factors such as overall household income in this study, it is likely that other disparities and challenges faced by minority populations persist in our society even today, contributing to the differences observed,” author Dr. Reshma Jagsi told Reuters Health by email. That group included nine percent of the white women participating in the survey, compared to 10 percent of the Spanish-speaking Latinas, 17 percent of the English-speaking Latinas and 15 percent of the black women, according to the results in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. About 35 percent of the women reported spending $2,000 or more out-of-pocket on cancer treatments, and 17 percent spent more than $5,000.