Financial toxicity or financial distress is a concept within healthcare, where high cost of treatment, often at the end of life, causes negative effects and outcomes beyond those of the disease.[citation needed] Such "toxic" effects may impact family, friends and the surrounding community as well as the patient.[citation needed] The concept has primarily been used for cancer patients in the United States, but it extends to other disease.[citation needed] Critics connect the phenomenon to recent rises phenomena such as crowdfunded treatment, and a large increase in treatment costs combined with a lower coverage by insurance companies since the 2007-'08 financial crisis.[citation needed]
Causes may be profiteering, ... fraud such as promoting alternative medicine or quackery .[citation needed] .. Many countries prohibit alternative medicine from being marketed to cancer patients, with many private oncology clinics being accused of straddling the border of legality.[citation needed] Provisions in end of life care or extreme cases allowing for experimental treatment have been implicated as a cause.[citation needed] False hope[1][2]
Effects are decreased treatment compliance ... decreased treatment efficacy, lowered quality of life ... [3][medical citation needed]
The term was coined by doctors Amy Abernethy and Yousuf Zafar in 2013.[4][5][6] This was done in response to a percieved need to discuss and plan for financial effects of treatment, as well as to wish to place such effects in the framework of side effects of treatment.[7]
See also: Cancer § Economic_effect |
SLE etc