Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US, exceeded only by heart disease. In 2018, 1,708,921 people were newly diagnosed and 599,265 people died of cancer.[1] Although age-adjusted cancer incidence decreased 9.5% over the past 20 years, from 481.7 per 100,000 in 2009 to 435.8 per 100,000 in 2018, the number of people diagnosed with cancer increased, from 1,292,222 in 2009 to 1,708,921 in 2018.[1,2] The estimated national expenditure for cancer care in the US rose from $190.2 billion in 2015 to $208.9 billion in 2020, a 10% increase mainly due to the aging and growth of the US population.[3,4] Costs will likely increase in future years as the population grows and ages and new and often more expensive treatments are adopted as standards of care.
Approximately 30% to 50% of cancers diagnosed today could be prevented by reducing exposure to tobacco smoke and other environmental carcinogens, maintaining healthy body weight, and receiving recommended cancer screenings and vaccinations. [5,6] Cancer screening, which is different from diagnostic testing, can detect cancer at early stages before symptoms occur, when it can be more successfully treated
