Also in the July 8 JNCI(s Melbye M.D. Ph.D. of the Karolinska In...),Health

Date:7/8/2008

s Melbye, M.D., Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen commend the study authors for their innovative and well-executed trial. The editorialists caution, however, that the trial was not designed to investigate cancer incidence and the current report is based on an ad hoc analysis. "The results are so unexpected that all possibilities for bias must be carefully examined," the editorialists write, particularly because of the timing and magnitude of the effect. "For the present, the results have to be interpreted with caution."

Contact:

• Article: Ken Thibodeaux, (802) 295-9363, extension 5424
• Editorial: Mads Melbye, mme@ssi.dk, +45-32683163

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Cancer Patients Less Likely to Disenroll from Medicare Managed Care Plans Than Cancer-Free Peers

Medicare participants with a cancer diagnosis are less likely to switch from a managed care plan to traditional fee-for-service Medicare than matched subjects who do not have a cancer diagnosis.

In many locations, Medicare beneficiaries can choose between traditional fee-for-service insurance and managed care plans. Managed care plan participants incur fewer out-of-pocket costs than those enrolled in traditional Medicare but may be restricted in their access to particular healthcare providers.

To determine whether Medicare participants are likely to disenroll from managed care plans following a cancer diagnosis, Elena Elkin, Ph.D., of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and colleagues used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database and linked Medicare enrollment files. The researchers identified 28,331 women with breast cancer, 26,494 individuals with colorectal cancer, 29,046 men with prostate cancer, and 31,243 individuals with lung cancer who were diagnosed between 1995 and 2002. The researchers compared the frequency of voluntar
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Contact: Liz Savage jncimedia@oxfordjournals.org 301-841-1287 Journal of the National Cancer Institute Source:Eurekalert

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