Medicaid reductions may impact screening for cancer, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Medicaid reductions being rolled out this year are poised to dramatically reduce cancer screening for millions, a new study estimates. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, takes a look at the numbers.

Nelson: This is an attempt to use data from all kinds of different sources to model what a reduction in Medicaid funding would look like for cancer screening and early detection. This is all across the country. What they argued over the first two years if there's a reduction in Medicaid funding that would be an estimated 7 and a half million Medicaid eligible adults who would otherwise undergo cancer screening who will lose coverage, so there will be about 406,000 missed mammograms, 680,000 missed colorectal cancer screening tests and 67,000 missed lung cancer screening.     :33

Nelson notes that when people forgo screening when cancers are detected they are more advanced and often harder to treat, as shown by data gathered during the pandemic when people chose not to be screened. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.