WASHINGTON, May 30 (UPI) -- A patient advocacy group Tuesday praised a new bill that would allow Medicare to pay for lung-cancer screening.
The legislation -- introduced last week in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Clay Shaw, R-Fla., "breaks through the wall of resistance the federal government has built around lung cancer screening," Laurie Fenton, president of the Lung Cancer Alliance, said in a statement released Tuesday.
"Many members of the baby boom generation are at high risk for lung cancer. Without early detection, the majority will be diagnosed at late stage, giving them less than a year to live under conditions that exert tremendous emotional and economic costs on the patients, their families, and the entire healthcare system," Fenton said.
Lung cancer accounts for almost one in three cancer deaths and kills more than three times as many men each year as prostate cancer and almost twice as many women as breast cancer, the group said.
The five-year survival rate for lung cancer has never topped 15 percent, LCA said, because only 16 percent of cases are found at the earliest localized stage when it can be successfully treated.
