American Cancer Society Advertising Campaign Against Lack of Adequate Health Coverage in U.S. a ‘Waste,’ According to Op-Ed
The American Cancer Society's decision to "no longer run ads about the dangers of smoking and other cancer-causing behaviors and the benefits of regular screenings" will "waste money that should be used to continue the society's educational campaign about prevention and detection," Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York and chair of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece (McCaughey, Wall Street Journal, 9/14). ACS last month announced its plan to use this year's entire advertising budget of $15 million to campaign against inadequate health insurance coverage (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 8/31).
According to McCaughey, "evidence shows that universal health coverage does not improve survival rates for cancer patients." She continues, "Despite the larger number of uninsured, cancer patients in the U.S. are most likely to be screened regularly, have the fastest access to treatment once they are diagnosed with the disease and can get new, effective drugs long before they're available in most other countries."
McCaughey writes, "International comparisons establish that the current method of financing health care in the U.S. is not a bigger killer than tobacco," adding, "What is deadly are delays in treatment and lack of access to the most effective drugs, problems encountered by some uninsured cancer patients in the U.S. but by a far larger proportion of cancer patients in the [United Kingdom] and Europe."
ACS "should continue its life-saving messages about prevention and screening instead of switching to a political agenda," McCaughey writes. She concludes, "The goal should be to ensure that all cancer patients receive the timely care our current system provides, not to radically overhaul the system" (Wall Street Journal, 9/14).
