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A new study has revealed that many a young cancer survivors avoid continuing medicines since it is too expensive, despite having health insurance.

The study, published online in Cancer, indicates that expanding insurance coverage for young cancer survivors may be insufficient to safeguard their long-term health without efforts to reduce their medical cost burdens, Medical Xpress reports.

"It is important to continue with the routine medical care in the years after a cancer diagnosis to detect any long-term health conditions associated with the cancer treatment. But there is not much known as to what extent young and adolescent cancer survivors receive their health care."

To gain more insights into the same, Anne Kirchhoff, PhD, MPH, of Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and her colleagues analyzed national survey responses from younger adults aged between 20 and 39 years.

The data of 979 participants, diagnosed with cancer between the ages of 15 and 34 years, and all of whom had been detected with the disease at least five years ago, was compared with 67,216 participants of the control group with no cancer history.

The study findings revealed that the ratio of adolescent and young adult cancer survivors not being insured was similar to those with no cancer, survivors were found to be 67 percent more likely to let go of the routine medical due to high expenses in the previous year.

Also, cost barriers were found to be particularly high for younger survivors between the ages of 20 and 29 years (44 percent versus 16 percent of controls) and female survivors (35 percent versus 18 percent of controls).

"The Affordable Care Act is an important step to ensuring that adolescent and young adult cancer survivors have health insurance coverage and improving their health care access; however, they need to be educated about the importance of regular health care to monitor for late effects," said Dr. Kirchhoff. "Furthermore, even the insured survivors in our study reported unmet health care needs due to cost barriers, suggesting that adolescent and young adult cancer survivors need resource supports beyond health insurance."