What cancer patients want and what Medicare covers may differ

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What cancer patients want and what Medicare covers may differ

By Kathryn Doyle NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - When asked what Medicare should cover for cancer patients in their last months of life, many patients and their caregivers choose benefits the federal insurance does not offer, like home-based long term care and concurrent palliative care, according to a new study based on interviews. Given an array of options, a limited budget and a chance to discuss the choices, patients and caregivers were not very likely to devote all coverage to curative cancer treatment, said lead author Donald H. Taylor Jr, of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Medicare covers what it defines as “reasonable and necessary care” and its standards have come to guide what private insurers are willing to pay for as well, Taylor and his colleagues write in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. As Medicare spending is targeted by federal cost cutting, the risk that patient choices will be narrowed increases, they write.

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