Insurance status linked to cance...(r survival rates were 83 percent for uni...),Health

For colorectal cancer, the report found that:

• Among men and women aged 50 to 64 years with private insurance, nearly half (48.3 percent) had had a recommended colorectal cancer screening test in the past ten years compared with fewer than one in five (18.8 percent) of those who were uninsured.

• Patients without health insurance were more likely than those with private insurance to be diagnosed with Stage IV and less likely to be diagnosed with Stage I colorectal cancer.

• Among whites, 50 percent of uninsured patients survived colorectal cancer for five years, compared to 66 percent who had private insurance; among African Americans, five-year survival rates were 41 percent among the uninsured compared with 60 percent of privately insured patients; among Hispanics, 57 percent of patients with no insurance survived five years compared with 63 percent of privately insured patients.

• Differences in survival between privately insured and uninsured patients were seen for all stages of colorectal cancer.

• Privately insured patients diagnosed with Stage II colorectal cancer were more likely to survive 5 years than uninsured patients diagnosed with Stage I.

Other findings from the study:

• Women between 40 and 64 without insurance were less likely than women with private insurance to have had a Pap test in the past three years (68 percent versus 87.9 percent).

• More than one in three privately insured men (37.1 percent) aged 50 to 64 years had received a prostate specific antigen test versus just one in seven (14 percent) uninsured men.

• Among individuals under age 65 years, those aged 18 to 24 years have the highest probability of being uninsured.
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