Gas prices confine sick people

Gas prices confine sick people

By Emily Bazar, USA TODAY

Sick Americans who travel far or frequently to get medical treatment are skipping or delaying appointments, leaving support groups and applying for grants to defray high gasoline prices.

People who visit the doctor multiple times each week or month, such as cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and people needing dialysis, have been hardest hit.

At the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, some skin cancer patients are delaying appointments because they can't afford gasoline, patient service representative Nicole Vliet says.

"It could be just a follow-up appointment, or it could affect their treatment," she says. "I really started to notice it in April when prices started to go up."

The average price for a gallon of regular gas was $3.68 Wednesday. That's down from the peak in July, but it is still about 90 cents above the price a year ago.

In Sacramento, Paratransit Inc. has felt the effect. The non-profit service provides $4 rides to seniors and people with disabilities to doctor's offices and elsewhere. In July, the number of requested rides jumped 11% over the group's projections to 38,506, deputy executive director Mary Steinert says.

"People are going to depend on us more because their friends and family can't afford to transport them in their cars," she says.

The American Kidney Fund, which helps patients on dialysis, offers transportation grants up to twice a year for a maximum of $175 each, president LaVarne Burton says.

More people are applying, citing gas prices and other pressures, she says. In the first seven months of the year, the group gave 12,842 grants, totaling $2.2 million, 31% more than during the same period last year.

CancerCare also is handing out more money for transportation. In the fiscal year that ended in June, the patient support organization gave $4.1 million in assistance, about $500,000 more than the previous year, executive director Diane Blum says. About 90% of the grants were for transportation.

To cope, the group is raising more money and reducing the amount of each grant, so it can give to more people.

Blum says cancer patients are looking for doctors or treatment centers closer to home. "We're seeing people looking for alternatives," she says.

People with other diseases also are affected.

Eugene Berg, 31, of San Diego was supposed to drive more than 80 miles roundtrip three times a week for phototherapy treatments for his psoriasis, a skin condition. Because of $20 co-payments and high gas costs, he asked for a machine he could use at home. Phototherapy exposes the skin to ultraviolet light.

Berg didn't get treatment until his insurance company approved the unit in April, three months after the doctor ordered it.

"Gas was definitely a factor, and so were co-payments," he says. "They add up."

Jimmy Workman, 64, of Inverness, Fla., has the degenerative neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or "Lou Gehrig's Disease." He used to visit a specialized ALS clinic more than 90 miles away in St. Petersburg at least three times a year, where he could see multiple specialists in one place. He stopped going when gas prices rose.

He visits different doctors closer to home, but less frequently.

Workman, who was diagnosed more than 10 years ago, stopped going to one of his two support groups to cut back on gas.

"He likes to go places a lot. That's what we think's kept him going for so long," says his wife, Gail, 52. "Now he sits here at home at his computer."

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