Doctor survived cancer, uninsured didn't

updated 10:48 a.m. ET April 3, 2007

Frustrated by the U.S. health care system, an Oklahoma doctor being treated for colon cancer decided to write an essay for a medical journal.

But it’s not his own care that upset him. It’s the plight of the uninsured — specifically a patient of his who was the same age, had the same disease, yet couldn’t afford the treatment he got.

Today, Dr. Perry Klaassen, 67, is still working part-time in an Oklahoma City clinic, six years after his diagnosis. Shirley Searcy, his patient, died 18 months after hers.

Klaassen’s treatment included surgery two days after diagnosis and costly new drugs that have kept him going despite cancer that has now spread to his lungs, liver and pelvis.

“I received the most efficient care possible. I was 61 years old and had good group health insurance through my workplace,” he wrote in the essay.

The doctor didn’t name Shirley Searcy in his March 14 article. After all he’d been through, he couldn’t remember her name. But for days he dug through old medical files searching for her identity after he was interviewed by The Associated Press. He realized he could shine a more powerful light on the plight of the uninsured if her story could be told more fully.

And it is a story that’s far from unique. The widowed mother of eight grown children, Searcy had little money. When she began to sense she might be sick, she put off going to the doctor for a year because she knew she couldn’t pay the medical bills. Deeply religious, she put her faith in God, according to her family.

By the time she saw Klaassen, her cancer had spread from her colon to her liver. She had surgery but rejected chemotherapy.

“She just really didn’t feel like she wanted to endure what that would cost physically or financially,” said her daughter-in-law, Karen Searcy.

Shirley Searcy died Dec. 22, 2003, about 18 months after her diagnosis.

Life or death issue
While recent attention has focused on high-profile cancer patients like Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow, who have the means and insurance to pay for the best treatment, there are tens of thousands of tragic, unseen cancer cases like Searcy’s — people whose lack of insurance stops them from seeking care when they should.

An estimated 112,000 Americans with cancer have no health insurance, according to Physicians for a National Health Program.

And that’s only cancer. Among the 45 million Americans who have no health insurance, there are countless people with chronic and developing health problems who are risking the same kind of fate that took Shirley Searcy’s life.

Klaassen’s essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association illustrates the issue “right there up close and personal,” said editor Dr. Catherine DeAngelis.

It underscores that insurance can be a life or death issue, said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan policy research organization. “The cost of health insurance has been going up faster than people’s incomes,” he said.

U.S. spending on health care totaled $2 trillion last year and economists in February projected it will nearly double by 2016.

Said DeAngelis: “We have the richest country in the world and I think the poorest health delivery system in the developed world. It’s really sad.”

Klaassen no longer sees patients but works part-time as medical director of an Oklahoma City group that recruits doctors to give free care to needy patients.

Always healthy and vigorous, his diagnosis in 2001 came as a shock.

He went to his family physician after experiencing an annoying pain in his lower abdomen for a few weeks. A CT scan showed possible inflammation, but his doctor recommended a colonoscopy, the gold-standard test for detecting colon cancer.

Klaassen had the test within two weeks. When the specialist ready with the results asked, “Is your wife with you?” Klaassen wrote, “I knew immediately that I had colon cancer.”

His wife was out of town, and needing someone to share the awful news with, he turned to a physician friend “and I broke down and cried.”

Surgery two days later showed the disease had spread outside the colon wall and to nearby lymph nodes. It was not quite as advanced as Mrs. Searcy’s, whose disease had spread to the liver.

MORE FROM HEALTH CARE

Health care Section Front

Advice for Obama: Knock heads on health care Rough road ahead for health care in Senate Ailing ‘uninsurables’ may face long wait for care Costs of defensive medicine spur heated debate Ditch new drugs, take older meds to cut costs Newsweek: Will health bill cover prayer treatments? Majority leader: House will pass health bill Going home: House calls to return with reform? Reid signals timetable for health care may slip House health bill totals $1.2 trillion Health care Section Front   Add Health care headlines to your news reader: