Cancer plan: patients obtain the right to be forgotten

Eliminate the double penalty is one of the objectives of the new Cancer Plan presented this Tuesday by François Hollande. Indeed, when a person has cancer, they are then penalized for accessing the loan or obtaining a correct rate from banks and insurance companies. The 3^e Plan cancer wants to grant by 2015 “a right to be forgotten” to people considered “cured”, that is to say a period beyond which they will no longer have to declare it to their insurer.

“Healing” is always a tricky word in cancer. Doctors prefer the term “complete remission” because they know that recurrence, however distant, is possible. However, statistically, doctors believe that a patient who has had cancer has a high chance of being “cured” when, 5 years after diagnosis, he finds the same life expectancy as the general population. of the same age, same sex and not having had cancer. Today, according to this definition, more than one in two cancers are cured, whereas one in three was cured thirty years ago. It is for this reason that patient associations, such as the League against cancer, campaigned for a “right to be forgotten”.

The measure announced in the plan primarily concerns pediatric cancers and before the end of 2015 other cancers. As a first step, the government planned to let representatives of insurance companies, mutual societies and other credit organizations negotiate with representatives of patients. This negotiation is part of the AERAS convention renovated in 2011 and planned to allow patients to borrow.
The National Cancer Institute (INCa) will propose the cancers to which to apply this measure, on the basis of the time to recurrence, the probabilities of survival with or without disability and of recovery. But, in the absence of an agreement within a conventional framework before the end of 2015, the implementation of this “right to be forgotten” will be organized by law.