November 11, 2024

Harmony Thrive

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Cancer Can Lead to Debt, Lower Credit Scores, and Even Bankruptcy

Cancer Can Lead to Debt, Lower Credit Scores, and Even Bankruptcy

A cancer diagnosis not only takes a serious toll on a person’s health, it can also devastate their finances.

Research presented at a recent meeting of the American College of Surgeons found that cancer patients are nearly five times more likely to experience bankruptcy than those without the disease, with higher debt collection rates.

“If you have medical bills, that converts to debt, which converts to collections, and in some cases that will result in a person going bankrupt,” says the study leader, Benjamin C. James, MD, the chief of general surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The results — based on a comparison of Experian credit bureau data from more than 99,000 people with cancer and nearly 189,000 people without — highlighted that average credit scores among cancer patients are nearly 80 points lower than for noncancer patients, and those credit score drops persisted for up to nine and a half years after diagnosis.

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