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Investigators examined the well-known racial disparity in colorectal cancer (CRC) survival in nearly 200,000 white and black CRC patients aged 18 to 64 years old. (Persons aged ≥65 years old uniformly have Medicare and therefore do not have a health insurance disparity.)
Black CRC patients were more likely to be younger (age <50 years) and to have stage IV disease and right-sided disease. Five-year survival was 9.2% higher in whites versus blacks (66.5% vs. 57.3%). Matching black patients to white patients showed that demographics, comorbidities, and treatment differences accounted for very little of the survival difference between blacks and whites. However, matching for insurance differences reduced the absolute difference in survival from…