Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Number is 29.7%
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| Deaths per 100,000 Source |
My post on Monday about the lack of mortality improvement from detection of thousands of cases of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) made me look for some data on the changing rate of colorectal cancer mortality in the US. The CDC has published data on this since 1999, during which time our population has aged – so we’d expect an increase in colon cancer mortality. We’ve also had a steep fall-off in death from heart disease, leaving more people alive to get colon cancer.
Nonetheless, the unadjusted mortality rate for colorectal cancer has decreased every year – for a total decrease of 29.7%
Now, don’t think for a minute that this means that doing more colonoscopies saves money. The cost per quality adjusted life year saved for colonoscopy is between $50-100,000. That means that saving all these lives has an associated cost of billions. But the purpose of medical care is to prevent death and improve the quality of life, not to lower costs.
Are you 50 or over? Get your colonoscopy, if you haven’t already! Repeat every 10 years. We need to see more bar graphs like this.
