The Affordable Care Act made people's timely access to cancer treatments better, and also may have improved the situation for racial disparities in access to such care.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, researchers found that the expansion of coverage, including Medicaid expansions for lower-income people, increased diagnosis rates and patient treatment for certain cancers earlier on in the disease.

In a recent conference, Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, an oncologist and president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said that new study results suggest that “patients who have better health-care coverage have better access to care, get diagnosed sooner, get started on treatment sooner.”

In fact, those studies are being highlighted at ASCO's annual meeting, which usually focuses on new clinical studies of cancer treatments. Lately, however, it has turned its attention to the question of whether patients actually have access to such treatments between cost and insurance factors.

“If you are cut off from the health care delivery system, you are not going to be able to get timely medical attention or timely preventive measures,” said Dr. Richard Schilsky, ASCO's chief medical officer,

One study from the Johns Hopkins University department of gynecology and obstetrics in Baltimore reached the conclusion that diagnosis rates for earlier-stage ovarian cancer and start of treatment within 30 days improved after the implementation of the ACA.

The study found an improvement of 1.7 percent in early-stage ovarian cancer diagnosis among women under 65, and a 1.6 percent rise in the number who began treatment within 30 days of diagnosis. Thanks to the ACA, patients had better access to primary care doctors, which in turn may have been responsible for earlier detection of ovarian cancers.

According to Dr. Anna Jo Smith, the lead study author, if people did not have access to primary care doctors, diagnosis might not happen till later stages in the disease because “[t]he onset of the initial symptoms can be so subtle that if you're not seeing a primary-care doctor” they could be missed.

Another study found that African-American patients got more timely treatment thanks to Medicaid expansion, bringing up to par with treatment rates received by white Americans.

Whites starting treatment within 30 days of diagnosis for several cancer types, including lung and breast cancers, rose from 41.8 percent to 43.1 percent after Medicaid expansion began in 2014. For African-Americans, the rates increased to 44.3 percent from 39.1 percent.

Of course, the ACA didn't solve all problems, since a third study found that people with multiple myeloma who had private insurance lived longer than patients on Medicaid or who have no insurance. That study, by researchers at University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center in Cleveland, also found people with multiple myeloma who lived in higher median-income areas also lived longer than those who lived in lower-income areas.

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ACA, Medicaid expansion improved cancer treatment access

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