When it comes to benefiting from experimental treatments offered in cancer clinical trials, your health insurance status and where you live matters, according to results of two new research studies to be presented at the 2019 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, held September 6 and 7 in San Diego.
Cancer patients who enroll in a clinical trial and have no health insurance, or are enrolled in Medicaid, the insurance program for low-income Americans, may not get the same benefits of successful trial treatments that other cancer patients do. Results from a separate study show that patients from socioeconomically deprived areas appear to have worse outcomes than their counterparts, even when treated on clinical trials with access to guideline-based cancer care.
