The hidden costs of cancer
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Why do many Australians assume cancer treatment is fully covered by Medicare?
This
podcast is sponsored by the Leukemia Foundation. Thanks for making this episode of The Daily Oz possible. Ready?
And good morning. This is The Daily
Oz.
This is The Daily Oz.
This is The Daily Oz.
Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to The Daily Oz. It's Sunday the 27th of September. I'm Sam Kozlowski.
I'm Billie Fitzsimons.
Most of us assume the same thing about cancer in Australia, that it's going to be covered. Medicare, the public system, and a fight that's more medical than financial. The Leukemia Foundation has just published research that says otherwise. They asked 655 Australians living with blood cancer what their diagnosis actually cost them. And about one in eight said that they'd missed, delayed or cancelled treatment because of money. I sat down with two people to work out how that happens. One who has lived it and one who has spent the last two years measuring it. Now, just before we start, we made this episode with the Leukemia Foundation. The survey numbers are theirs and we'll say so every time. Everything else we checked ourselves.
So Sam, we're talking about the financial cost of cancer, which
I think
in the conversation about cancer, we don't often think about how it financially impacts the people who are suffering from the disease. Tell me who you spoke to to understand the actual cost here.
So two conversations, two very different chats. So first I spoke to Alanna Clark. She's 42. She's a mum of three from Wilton in southwest Sydney. And she's actually had two cancer diagnoses in 12 months. I'll tell you a bit more of her story in a sec. Then I also spoke to Bill Stavresky, and he's the head of research at the Leukemia Foundation. He actually ran the survey that has delivered these results. I interviewed them separately, both here at TDA in our studio on different days, and neither heard the others' answers, which as we go through this chat, I just think is really remarkable with how aligned they are in terms of research experience and lived experience. And it is worth saying up front, I...
entered both of these interviews expecting to talk about the cost of treatment specifically. And that wasn't the focus for either of them.
What was the focus?
Well, I want to get into it because in many ways, it's the things that are happening outside the hospital, but also the money that they had coming in that they now don't.
Right.
But we're jumping ahead there.
Well, let's start with Alana. You said that she was diagnosed with cancer twice. Tell us about her journey.
A remarkable woman. So in 2023, she was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, no family history. She just found a lump one day. She had surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, more surgery, and then immunotherapy. And she was back at work, still nine months into that 12-month treatment course when she got sick again. And her second diagnosis came 12 months to the day after the first.
It was a form of leukemia and it was called a therapy related AML, which means I actually got it from the breast cancer treatment.
So just to kind of think through that, really the treatment that did save her from that first cancer caused the second cancer. And she was told at the time that the chance of that second cancer developing was about 0.5%. So very rare and, you know, to have two cancers back-to-back is an unbelievably tough situation.
Yeah, I don't think I actually knew that that
could happen, that you
could get a second form of cancer from the treatment of the first cancer.
Well, there's the radiation and the chemotherapy that was used in the treatment of the breast cancer. They're really powerful treatments designed to kill cancer cells, but they can also affect other systems and parts of your body. And the treatment for those two cancers is really different. And that's what drives a lot of the costs that we see with blood cancers. So with breast cancer chemotherapy, hospital stays, and this is what Alana was telling me, are often a couple of hours at a time. You go in, you have your treatment, and then you can go home.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
Why do many Australians assume cancer treatment is fully covered by Medicare?
0:00–5:13
2
Who are the two guests and what unique perspectives do they bring to the hidden costs of blood cancer?
5:13–13:30
3
How did Alana Clarke’s double cancer diagnosis lead to unexpected medical expenses?
13:30–20:56