McCancer

Cancer treatment is BIG BUCKS. Lots of people getting very rich off it. Big Pharma, radiologists, radiological equipment etc.

I see they on Long Island, they all want a slice of that action. Memorial Sloan Kettering has locations in various parts of the island now, and I think Winthrop, South Nassau, Northwell, and Catholic Health also are springing up cancer diagnostic and infusion places. It must be that the reimbursement for those procedure codes is better than other specialities, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it.

Long Island is basically a cancer cluster fuck.

We keep having dialysis buildings going up. They look like bank branches as they're being built.

There were a lot of Top Secret military things happening on Long Island in the past, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is dangerous amounts of radiation giving these cancers.

I went into one and it’s rows and rows of hallways with rooms in them.

You wait in the lobby, then you get checked by having your blood drawn. They herd you in with other people when they’re busy. Then give you instructions to get to your examining room (“third halfway down to the left”) and wait to see your doc. Very much like a factory assembly line.

Great observation, OP. I'm no apologist for in the insurance industry, but when people talk about healthcare reform they almost solely talk about the insurance companies and not about the hospital industrial complex. Many of the "non-profit" hospital systems actually make massive profits.

I count 11 on Long Island, with a bunch of them clustered around Stony Brook Hospital on the north Shore of Suffolk Country.

They're building ancillary services such as chemo, radiation, infusion chairs, etc outside of hospitals because it's more profitable for them to do so. Of course they probably partner with a hospital system for referrals and physician complement. Cancer is big business.

Cancer Centers of America advertise relentlessly near me. I find it odd. Why would you go to a McCancer center (love that name) rather than one of the 3 nationally ranked cancer hospitals in the city? Who chooses those places over the major research hospitals?

Ain’t no way I’m going to one of the McCancer centers. There has been so many cutting edge developments in cancer treatment, it’s suicide to go to a mediocre, profit-driven treatMent center.

Whenever I visit my in-laws in Florida, I'm amazed that every billboard is either about healthcare (particularly cancer) or lawyers

Well the game is almost up on cancer. You see they're finally figuring out we can prime the human immune system to wipe it out.

CEO Dr. Jeff Vacira

R13 - that guy looks shady. Like a used car salesman - the teeth, hair, forced smile.

McCancers aren't hospitals like Cancer Centers of America, they’re outpatient services. Cancer Centers of America are inpatient, so far as I know.

They are banking on keeping baby boomers alive & extracting money from them. I keep going to mine & tge doctor can’t say why, meaning I have no real diagnosis. Just a symptom - high white blood count, mostly neutrophils. Medicare pays. This guy does blood tests on me every 8 weeks to see if my WBC is still elevated. “It is still elevated. Come back in 8 weeks.” It’s not wildly elevated, like you’d see in leukemia. Just mildly elevated, like if I had an infection somewhere. But nobody can find any reason for it,

Meanwhile, my hands, knees & feet are killing me from my osteo arthritis getting worse & nobody cares. I can’t bend over to pick something off the floor & people are getting aggravated with me because I take more than a bono second to get out of my chair when my name is called. Do they propose any treatment fir that? No. But they’ll take my money every 8 weeks for blood tests in a fancy schmancy new McCancer office building.

Nanosecond

I live in a small resort town in northern Michigan, where the folks who own Cancer Centers of America have built a 38,000 sq foot lakeside mansion with their malignancy money. Fittingly, they built on a piece of land known locally as "Cemetery Point" but that was bad for their brand, I guess, so they renamed it "Celebration Point", which sounds like a tacky theme park. After they built their spawling, mall-sized cottage, they tried to have their property taxes reduced, which just adds to their aura of obnoxiousness. I will say, however, that the lady who sews my curtains, bedspreads, etc. is in the midst of making their MANY window treatments. She claims that the CCA people are actually quite nice as employers. They flew her by private jet to the Bahamas to work on their place there. False hope is a mega-money-making enterprise, apparently.

When you think about it, there are enough people buying medication to keep all those CVSs in business, so I guess McCancer franchises will become as ubiquitous as CVS.

OP, my oncologist's practice (in Manhattan) was purchased by NY Cancer & Blood Specialists a few months before I started going there. I am not a fan. They're constantly instituting some new administrative practice that makes life more annoying for the patients; e.g., I used to be able to call my doctor's practice directly. Now all calls go through a central reception desk that typically puts you on hold for a zillion years and may or not bother conveying your message to the appropriate person when you finally do get through.

I also get the distinct impression that NY Cancer's only real goal is to pack each doctor's roster with as many patients as is remotely possible. I once overheard my onc telling someone she sees 40 patients in a day, which seems insane when dealing with potentially very complicated and/or life-threatening cases. I've heard from other patients who've been with the practice longer than I have that things were much more pleasant and humane when the practice was independent. Oh, well, I am soon leaving them for Columbia Presbyterian.

R10, you are absolutely right to run, not walk, away from the for-profit Cancer Centers of America and to an NCI-designated cancer center should you ever be stricken.

r12, thus far, immunotherapy has only proved effective for a few types of cancer (and within those types, it doesn't work for all patients). There are dozens or hundreds of immunotherapy clinical trials underway all over the place and I do expect to see many more advances in this field, but to say the game is "almost up" is a stretch.

Not really, OP. I live in the Philadelphia western suburbs, where Big Medicine is completely dominated by the University of Pennsylvania. Penn has a huge new center near me, and another, also nearly new, a bit further out. They treat everything, but of course also have cancer centers.

In other parts of the area, Fox Chase and Main Line Health/Jefferson dominate cancer care. We have a lot of Big Medicine in Philly, so these fly-by-night cancer centers don’t gain as much traction here as they do in other places.

They're also for all the kidney problems caused by diabetes.

Keep 'em stupid and sick. The Repug motto.

Agree R21. Philly cancer centers are awesome. One of the best things about it. And without the expense of NYC or LA. Plus they aren’t overwhelmed like NYC cancer centers - you actually get decent support care. One of the reasons I plan to retire there.