The estimate focused on five cancers for which there is medically recommended screening — breast, cervical, colorectal, lung and prostate — and found that colonoscopies accounted for most of the costs.The United States spent $43 billion annually on screening to prevent five cancers, according to one of the most comprehensive estimates of medically recommended cancer testing ever produced.The analysis, published on Monday in The Annals of Internal Medicine and based on data for the year 2021, shows that cancer screening makes up a substantial proportion of what is spent ever year on cancer in the United States, which most likely exceeds $250 billion. The researchers focused their estimate on breast, cervical, colorectal, lung and prostate cancers, and found that more than 88 percent of screening was paid for by private insurance and the rest mostly by government programs.Dr. Michael Halpern, the lead author of the estimate and a medical officer in the federally funded National Cancer Institute’s health care delivery research program, said his team was surprised by the high cost, and noted that it was likely to be an underestimate because of the limits of the analysis.For Karen E. Knudsen, the chief executive of the American Cancer Society, the value of screening for the cancers is clear. “We are talking about people’s lives,” she said. “Early detection allows a better chance of survival. Full stop. It’s the right thing to do for individuals.”“We screen for cancer because it works,” Dr. Knudsen added. “The cost is small compared to the cost of being diagnosed with late-stage disease.”Other researchers say the finding supports their contentions that screening is overused, adding that there is a weak link between early detection and cancer survival and that the money invested in cancer testing is not being well spent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Pharmacists have warned people not to buy fake weight-loss jabs online as a shortage of Ozempic is expected to stretch into next year.

BBCTechnology that identifies people at risk of a heart attack in the next 10 years has been hailed as “game changing” by scientists.

BBCA woman who lives with a form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos is trying to raise awareness of the dangerous substance.

HandoutTwo people with cystic fibrosis have said they are having to eat less due to a shortage in a medication which helps them eat.

A Welsh actress has described how obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) after she gave birth made her fear she was a danger to her baby.

Adult children are less likely to assist an aging stepparent, studies show. A growing “step gap” in senior care worries experts.The encounter happened years ago, but Beverly K. Brandt remembers it vividly.She was leaving her office at Arizona State University, where she taught design history, to run an errand for her ailing stepfather. He had moved into a retirement community nearby after his wife, Dr. Brandt’s mother, died of cancer.As his caregiver, Dr. Brandt spoke with him daily and visited twice a week. She coordinated medical appointments, prescriptions, requests for facility staff — the endless responsibilities of maintaining a man in his 90s.Maybe she looked especially frazzled that day, she said, because a longtime colleague drew her aside with a startling question.“Beverly, why are you doing this?” he said. “He’s not a blood relative. He’s just a stepfather. You don’t have any obligations.”“I was dumbfounded,” Dr. Brandt, 72, recalled. “I still can’t understand it.”She was 5 when her father died. Three years later, she said, her mother married Mark Littler, an accounting executive and a “wonderful” parent.“He’d come home from a grueling job, change out of his good clothes, then carry me around the living room on his back,” she recalled. Later, he introduced her to the symphony and the theater, funded her graduate education and mentored her as she entered the academic world.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The Canadian Medical Association has called for a ban on payments for procedures long covered by public systems and is warning about contracting services out.With perhaps 6.5 million Canadians finding themselves without a personal doctor and with seemingly endless waiting times becoming almost a norm for some medical procedures, private medicine is increasingly being pitched as a solution for those and other problems in Canada’s public health system.In Quebec, doctors have been leaving the public health care system for private clinics.Ian Austen/The New York TimesPrivate medicine comes in various forms. Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government is planning to expand public funding for cataract surgeries and M.R.I. scans in private clinics and contract out hip and knee replacement surgeries.In Quebec, doctors have increasingly been dropping out of the public medical system entirely to open private medical clinics where patients pay thousands of dollars each year to see a family doctor. Elsewhere, clinics are exploiting a loophole in current laws that ban payment for essential medical services by using nurse practitioners rather than doctors.Canadians impatient with wait times have long flown to other countries for surgeries they pay for themselves.And many hospitals across the country are coping with nurse shortages, which became widespread during the pandemic, by bringing in temporary nursing staff from for-profit agencies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

In “Telltale Hearts,” a new memoir, Dr. Dean-David Schillinger traces the links between narrative and well-being.One of the riveting tales in “Telltale Hearts,” a new memoir, is about the author’s great-uncle Aladar, a Hungarian Jew who was drafted to fight the Russians in 1916 and spent months in trenches, shooting and getting shot at, and waiting.Russian troops launched an offensive that fall that overwhelmed the Austro-Hungarian soldiers. At one point, Aladar found himself on his back, staring up at a massive Russian soldier who was about to plunge a bayonet into his chest.The two locked eyes, and the Russian looked at Aladar as if he knew him from somewhere.“Are you a Jew?” he asked. Aladar didn’t answer, so the Russian asked again. In Yiddish.This time, Aladar nodded, and the Russian looked around, winked, pulled him out of the trench, hugged and kissed him, and said he would take Aladar prisoner and keep him safe until the war ended. And he did.What’s this war story doing in a book about a safety net hospital that treats poor patients in San Francisco? For the author, Dr. Dean-David Schillinger, the moment of recognition, of seeing oneself in another, is a critical part of doctoring.One of the chief complaints about physicians these days is that they don’t have enough time and they don’t really listen. So Dr. Schillinger, a primary care physician at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, has written a book about the importance of patients’ stories. He writes of the power of narrative to build trust that cuts through the barriers that often separate doctors and patients to ultimately improve care.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

BBCIt had been the NHS’s longest-running and bitterest pay dispute – responsible for hundreds of thousands of cancelled operations and appointments.