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• Posted October 9, 2024

Affordable Care Act Is Helping Young Americans With Cancer Beat the Disease

Cancer in young adults is rare, but the insurance coverage given them by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has greatly boosted the survival of people ages 19 to 25 who got the disease, a new study shows.

The findings were published Oct. 7 in the journal Cancer.

The ACA (also known as Obamacare) passed Congress in 2010 and allowed people in that age group to remain covered by their parents' plans.

How did that affect their cancer outcomes?

To find out, researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) tracked cancer death data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and another major federal database for the years 2010 through 2021.

They compared death rates for the newly covered age group of 19-25 to that of younger (12 to 18) and older people (26 to 32).

They found that the 19 to 25 age group "was the only age group of the three to have had improvements in both cancer survival and death rate trends after ACA implementation," according to a journal news release.

The results were dramatic: Following the passage of the ACA, people ages 19 through 25 had a 6-year cancer survival rate that was 2.6 times higher than that of 12-to-18-year-olds, and 3.9 times greater than people ages 26 to 32.

In terms of the number of cancer deaths, people ages 19 to 25 saw decreases that were more than 2.1 and 1.5 times greater than people in the younger and older age groups, respectively, the study also found.

Study lead author Dr. Archie Bleyer called that a success.

Within a decade of its passage, the ACA's extended coverage for youth "allowed young adults with cancer who were covered by it to live longer and more likely be cured," he said.

The initiative and Medicaid "should not only be continued but expanded to enable more Americans to be diagnosed earlier, require less therapy, and, for those diagnosed later with their disease, to live longer and have higher cure rates,” said Bleyer, who is health services research collaborator of cancer medicine at OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute.

Young patients with other conditions have also likely benefited, Bleyer added.

“Other serious physical or mental diseases are likely also having better outcomes" among young adults, he said.

More information

Find out more about health care coverage under the age of 26 at Healthcare.gov.

SOURCE: Oregon Health & Science University, news release, Oct. 7, 2024