Cancer patients facing costly treatment can benefit from frank talks with doctors

Jamie Drzewicki, 58, of Pembroke Pines, Fla., who was diagnosed with breast cancer more than two years ago, reached her annual health insurance limit of $100,000 a few months after her diagnosis and ended up owing about $75,000 for her treatment. She paid at least something regularly and, though she still owes $30,000, the hospital recently forgave $40,000 of the debt

Diane Blum, head of CancerCare, a national social service agency that offers counseling and financial assistance for cancer patients, says financial assistance from CancerCare and other agencies can be based on a patient's income as well as availability of funds. Some agencies have funds that cover a particular cancer, but stop giving out money once that allotment is used up. If that's the case, patients can apply to other agencies, and reapply to the closed fund the following year, if necessary, when coffers may have been refilled.

Blum and others also suggest that cancer patients cede the financial quests, at least at first, to a trusted friend or family member as they take in the news about the cancer and begin treatment.

There is no guarantee of assistance, especially now, when so many people are losing their jobs and their insurance and many will likely need help with costs, Blum says. But it can't hurt to try.

Just ask Maria D'Acosta, 59, of Carlsbad and her daughter, Paola Campos-D'Acosta, 30. Campos-D'Acosta left her job with a temporary employment agency in New York City after being diagnosed with breast cancer last summer. She had no insurance when doctors told her she'd need a mastectomy and chemotherapy to treat the Stage 3B cancer, and is now $100,000 in debt.

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Help for mom, daughter

Social workers at Harlem Hospital, the city hospital where she had a mastectomy, recommended applying to Medicaid in New York state to cover her bills retroactively, and a friend referred her to the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Treatment and Prevention, affiliated with Memorial-Sloan Kettering Medical Center in New York City.

Just before coming to New York to look after her daughter, D'Acosta felt a lump in her own breast and mentioned it to her daughter's doctors. They insisted she have a biopsy, which showed the lump to be malignant. D'Acosta, who closed her interior design business last year, had dropped her insurance some months before, as business dwindled.