Association of cancer history and medical financial hardship with mortality in the United States.

Abstract

86 Background: Cancer survivors frequently experience medical financial hardship in the United States. Little is known, however, about its long-term health consequences. In this study, we examine the associations of cancer history, medical financial hardship and mortality in a large nationally representative sample. Methods: We identified cohorts of adults aged 18-64 years (n = 415,114) and 65-79 years (n = 73,571) from the 1997-2014 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the NHIS Linked Mortality Files with vital status through December 31, 2015. Medical financial hardship was measured as problems affording care or delaying or forgoing any medical care due to cost in the past 12 months using survey questions consistently available in all NHIS years. Risk of mortality estimated with weighted Cox’s proportional hazards models with age as the time scale, controlling for the effects of sex, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, marital status, comorbid conditions, region, and survey year. Health insurance coverage was added separately to multivariable models. All estimates accounted for the complex survey design. Results: Among adults aged 18-64 years, 29.6% with and 21.3% without a cancer history reported financial hardship Among adults aged 65-79 years with and without a cancer history, the same percentage reported financial hardship: 11.1%. Among adults aged 18-64 years, cancer survivors with financial hardship had the highest adjusted mortality risk (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.14, 95% confidence interval [95CI]: 1.92-2.37); followed by cancer survivors without medical financial hardship (HR: 1.93, 95CI: 1.81-2.06); and adults without a cancer history with medical financial hardship (HR: 1.36; 95CI: 1.31-1.41) compared with adults with neither a cancer history nor financial hardship. Similar pattern was observed among adults aged 65-79 years: cancer survivors with (HR: 1.62, 95CI: 1.45-1.82) and without (HR: 1.34, 95CI: 1.28-1.24) medical financial hardship and adults without a cancer history with financial hardship (HR: 1.17, 95CI: 1.10-1.24) had elevated mortality risk. Further adjustment for health insurance coverage reduced the magnitude of association of financial hardship and mortality among adults 18-64 years, but further adjustment for insurance had little effect on mortality risk among those aged 65-79 years. Conclusions: Medical financial hardship was associated with increased risk of mortality among adults with and without a cancer history, highlighting the need for efforts to mitigate financial hardship in the United States.