Selected Columns
Kaleidoscope of the Heart: Doctors need to listen to patients' pains from financial burden
I recently was impacted greatly by a book that emerged as an offshoot from a television documentary, titled "Cancer patients: a battle with money" (by the Sapporo Television Broadcasting Co. reporting team).
Now it is said that one in two Japanese faces cancer, but the financial burden faced by cancer patients and their families is not often talked about.
People might note that Japan has both medical insurance and high-cost medical expense systems, and that many people have taken out life insurance policies. But there are various problems with these systems. Naturally, if a person has to decrease their workload or quit their job to attend to their own medical treatment, then their finances will immediately be dealt a serious blow. And if they want to receive treatment using the latest cancer drugs then the financial burden becomes massive.
In a survey taken by the television station that produced the documentary, over 90 percent of cancer patients said they felt a financial burden. However, it remains a fact that there is hardly any public support for cancer patients, and the few systems that patients can use remain relatively unknown. For example, cancer is now covered by disability pensions, but it is said that this fact is not widely known even at Social Insurance Agency counters.
One doctor featured in the book on cancer patients who specializes in cancer drug treatment says that he has seen many patients give up on treatment because they have no money. But he notes that he can still help out.
"The fact that anti-cancer drugs are expensive can't be helped, as a lot of money is spent on their development, but I realized that I could help more by studying and informing the patients about the various aid systems."
What he says is right. In the future, doctors will not be able to help patients in a true sense if they stick to saying that medicine is all they know. It is by keeping alert to the patient's mental well-being and their everyday lives, in addition to their financial problems and the available support systems, that a doctor in charge of a patient actually begins to function as an "attending physician."
Even if the doctors can't go that far, it is still vital that they be willing to at least point the patients in the right direction, telling them, "There are probably some systems for you to use, so ask a medical social worker."
In spite of this, with the demands of day-to-day medical treatment and paperwork, together with the tasks of memorizing new treatment methods and medicines, medical workers have their hands full, and it tends to be the doctors who say, "Medical expenses? I'm not the person to ask about that."
But I want to remind myself: There are times when the battle with money causes more suffering to a patient than the illness that confronts them. (By Rika Kayama, psychiatrist)
Click here for the original Japanese story
(Mainichi Japan) February 21, 2010