Abstract
Background: Uninsured adolescents and young adults (AYAs) and those with publicly funded health insurance are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at later stages. However, prior population-based studies have not distinguished between AYAs who were continuously uninsured from those who gained Medicaid coverage at the time of cancer diagnosis. Methods: AYA patients (ages 15-39 years) with nine common cancers diagnosed from 2005 to 2014 were identified using California Cancer Registry data. This cohort was linked to California Medicaid enrollment files to determine continuous enrollment, discontinuous enrollment, or enrollment at diagnosis, with other types of insurance determined from registry data. Multivariable logistic regression was used to evaluate factors associated with later stages at diagnosis. Results: The majority of 52 774 AYA cancer patients had private or military insurance (67.6%), followed by continuous Medicaid (12.4%), Medicaid at diagnosis (8.5%), discontinuous Medicaid (3.9%), other public insurance (1.6%), no insurance (2.9%), or unknown insurance (3.1%). Of the 13 069 with Medicaid insurance, 50.1% were continuously enrolled. Compared to those who were privately insured, AYAs who enrolled in Medicaid at diagnosis were 2.2-2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with later stage disease, whereas AYAs discontinuously enrolled were 1.7-1.9 times and AYAs continuously enrolled were 1.4-1.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with later stage disease. Males, those residing in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods, and AYAs of Hispanic or black race and ethnicity (vs non-Hispanic white) were more likely to be diagnosed at a later stage, independent of insurance. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that access to continuous medical insurance is important for decreasing the likelihood of late stage cancer diagnosis.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1152-1160 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Journal of the National Cancer Institute |
Volume | 111 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 1 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Conflicts of interest: KWK is the principal investigator on the Medi-Cal Quality Improvement Program (MCQuIP) funded by the California Department of Health Care Services. The other authors have no disclosures.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Cancer Research Coordinating Committee (grant number CRR-17–420784). The collection of cancer incidence data used in this study was supported by the California Department of Public Health as part of the statewide cancer reporting program mandated by California Health and Safety Code Section 103885; the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program under contract HHSN261201000140C awarded to the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, contract HHSN261201000035C awarded to the University of Southern California, and contract HHSN261201000034C awarded to the Public Health Institute; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Program of Cancer Registries under agreement U58DP003862-01 awarded to the California Department of Public Health.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Published by Oxford University Press.