"If we can fix health care system for cancer patients, we will fix it for millions of others."

That's the mantra of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, which plans on spending $3 million on advertising and grassroots organizing in the next couple of months to push for comprehensive health reform. The cancer society is all too well aware of how the system fails sick people, particularly sick people who have little or no health insurance. For starters, they are more likely to die—even if their cancer is detected early.

ACS CAN released a poll Monday that showed how scary cancer can be. Not the disease. The bills.

Of the 1000 people surveyed, four in 10 said they didn't think they would be able to afford cancer treatment if they got sick. One in five said it's likely that they or someone in their household would lose health coverage in the next year. One in seven have delayed a cancer screening test in the past year because of cost (and the proportion was higher in lower income groups).

A recent ASC CAN study of national health spending data found that only 7 in 10 cancer patients had "adequate" insurance. Nearly 10 percent were uninsured, and 18 percent underinsured.

"Lack of access to quality, affordable health care is a barrier for far too many Americans, and is often a death sentence for people with cancer and other life-threatening chronic diseases," said John R. Seffrin, the CEO of both the cancer society and ACS CAN.

Moving this deeply into policy advocacy is relatively new for a disease group, but Seffrin and Daniel Smith, president of ACS CAN, said they are quite optimistic that we are on the brink of "something big." For the cancer society, the big goals are covering everyone while improving the care they receive, with a particular emphasis on prevention, screening and wellness, as well as better palliative care and pain control on the other. Seffrin expressed outrage that significant numbers of nursing home patients dying of cancer don't get anything stronger than an over-the-counter pain pill. We can do a lot better, he said, and it would only cost "chump change."

Earlier this year, the ACS and the Kaiser Family Foundation issued a report on how even insured people with cancer ran into tremendous economic obstacles. Smith said some of the patients featured in that report would spend a day lobbying Congress in May, a few weeks before Senate committees aim to begin work on health reform legislation.

Smith said the cancer group had a much more visible role than in the failed 1993–94 health reform efforts. "We have a voice and a seat at the table—at a lot of tables around town."