$10,000 to $30,000 per month for the Cost of Cancer Medications: Can You Afford to Ignore this Financial Tool?

If you’re a metastatic breast cancer patient or survivor seeking financial help and have been diagnosed with Stage III Metastatic Breast Cancer or Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer, there is help available. When first diagnosed with an advanced stage III or IV metastatic breast cancer, there isn’t much time to fully digest what this means and what life is going to be like moving forward.

In most cases, the last thing that’s on your mind is looking for financial help for cancer patients, copays, cancer treatments and cancer medications. Most people start to deplete their immediate financial assets, by paying for cancer treatments with a credit card or quickly depleting a savings account to cover the cost of cancer medications.

How Much Does Breast Cancer Treatment Cost?

Here are the typical costs for breast cancer patients:

• For patients covered by health insurance, out-of-pocket costs for breast cancer treatment typically consist of doctor visit, lab and prescription drug copays as well as coinsurance of 10%-50% for surgery and other procedures, which can easily reach the yearly out-of-pocket maximum. In most cases, breast cancer treatment is covered by health insurance, although some plans might not cover individual drugs or treatments. You’ll want to check with your health insurance provider.
• If you’re a breast cancer patient not covered by health insurance, breast cancer treatment typically costs $15,000-$50,000 or more for a mastectomy or $17,000 to $35,000 or more for a lumpectomy followed by radiation.
• If you need to get chemotherapy, those costs will be about $10,000-$100,000 or more, depending on the cancer drugs prescribed, the method of administration and the length or number of treatments. For example, some women have pointed out that their chemotherapy costs were in the range of $7,000-$40,000 per treatment.
• If you detect breast cancer early enough, you may not need as many cancer treatments. Of course, this depends on your individual case and the type and number of cancer treatments recommended by your oncologist. On average, the total cost of breast cancer treatment if caught early enough will be about $100,000 — and in the more advanced stage breast cancers (Stage III and Stage IV breast cancer), you’re looking at breast cancer treatment plans being $300,000 or more. BMC Cancer published a study which found that the average total cost of care over a mean follow-up of 532 days was about $128,500 for women with metastatic breast cancer receiving chemotherapy as their primary treatment. This includes the cost of the chemotherapy drugs, additional drugs to help manage side effects, administration of the drugs and medical care for chemotherapy-related complications.

How Can I Pay For Metastatic Breast Cancer Treatments?

Patient navigators and social workers will generally refer you to various short-term financial help for metastatic breast cancer patients, such as a health care assistance program for medical care, prescription drugs and other medical items or a transportation assistance organization that provides local transportation to and from cancer treatments, and a lot of other cancer programs. While these programs ALL prove to be helpful for breast cancer patients, they usually do not provide enough ongoing support in the long journey ahead for your fight against metastatic breast cancer.

What if you had to quit your job due to breast cancer due to not feeling well enough to work? How do you replace that income? Maybe you looked into long-term disability, but don’t qualify or maybe you considered selling your life insurance policy through a life settlement or viatical sale, but didn’t want to eliminate the possibility of leaving money for your family should anything happen.

You do have the option to remain in financial control with your life insurance policy. You can borrow money against your life insurance policy through a collateral loan, without taking on ANY additional financial burdens. Many of our clients have sought out life insurance loans from us when looking for financial help for breast cancer. We have been able to help hundreds of families and have provided over $75 million in financial help for cancer. More often than not, our clients have found out about this financial option just in time to save their homes and keep from disrupting their lives any further than cancer already had.

Here’s Kristane’s Story

Kristane was diagnosed with an advanced inflammatory breast cancer. She has a husband and three young daughters. With the medical bills from cancer treatments piling up, Kristane and her family were very close to losing their home. She started researching her financial options in an effort to save their home, which lead to borrowing against her life insurance policy with a life insurance loan from Fifth Season.

Kristane from Indiana says, “Fifth Season Financial helped me to live a better life while battling advanced inflammatory breast cancer. The company gave me the financial freedom to focus on the constant cancer treatments and enabled my family to keep their home! My husband, three daughters and I thank you ever so much!”