US spends $4.3bn a year on cancer screening

An expert at the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, has questioned the value of screening, after a study found that the US spends about $4.3bn each year on screening for cancer.Screening is an important part of the more than $250bn the US spends on cancer care every year, including treatment and survivorship, said the study’s authors, from the National Cancer Institute, in the Annals of Internal Medicine.1 The cost of cancer treatment in the first year after diagnosis has been estimated at $52.6bn—greater than the estimated cost of annual screening.“Screening for breast, cervical, colorectal, and lung cancer has generally been reported to be cost-effective in the United States,” the authors said. They noted that overall cancer mortality decreased by 2.1% a year from 2015 to 2019 and that death rates during this period “notably decreased” for breast, cervical, colorectal, and lung…
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