Cancer: The Facts

Nearly 40 years after President Nixon declared a war on cancer, the battlefield shows signs of both progress and setbacks.

Incidence and mortality

• Nearly 1.5 million people – roughly the population of Phoenix, AZ – are diagnosed with cancer each year.

• 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women will develop cancer during their lifetime.

• Today 65% of adults diagnosed with cancer will be alive five years after diagnosis, up from 50% in the 1970s.

• Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the US, exceeded only by heart disease. Within the next decade, cancer is likely to replace heart disease as the leading cause of death in the U.S. It is already the biggest killer of those under the age of 85.

• This year, about 565,650 Americans are expected to die of cancer – more than 1,500 people a day.

• In the U.S., cancer accounts for 1 of every 4 deaths.

• There are nearly 12 million cancer survivors living in the United States today. This number has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The number of survivors will grow as the population ages and progress against cancer continues.

• Since more than 60% of those diagnosed with cancer are Medicare age, the aging baby boomer population will lead to an exponential increase in the number of cancer survivors.

• African-American men and women have the highest mortality rates for all cancer sites combined.

• While dramatic survival improvements have been achieved in patients diagnosed with cancer at age 15 or younger and steady improvement has been made against a number of cancers common among those over age 40, little or no progress has been seen in the adolescent and young adult population. In fact, among those aged 25 to 35 years, survival has not improved in more than two decades.

Cancer costs and insurance coverage

• The National Institutes of Health estimate overall costs of cancer in 2007 at $219.2 billion: $89.0 billion for direct medical costs (total of all health expenditures); $18.2 billion for indirect morbidity costs (cost of lost productivity due to illness); and $112.0 billion for indirect mortality costs (cost of lost productivity due to premature death).

• 17% of Americans younger than age 65 have no health insurance coverage and 24% of Americans age 65 or older only have Medicare.

Source: American Cancer Society and The National Insitutes of Health