American Cancer Society Financial Assistance

We found that the confusion around “ACS financial assistance” comes from two places. First, the Society’s site mentions lodging and transportation grants, but those grants go to partner hospitals and health systems that then run local programs, so you may benefit from ACS money without ever dealing with ACS directly. Asking your hospital’s social worker whether it has ACS-funded lodging or ride help is a useful first question. Second, a lot of third-party websites use the Society’s name in headlines about “cancer grants,” which leads people to expect a check that isn’t coming.

One change worth knowing about: the Society’s wig and post-surgical products program, once called EverYou, is no longer available. ACS now points people to its online Resource Search to find local wig banks and headwear programs. If you need a wig, ask your insurer whether it covers a “cranial prosthesis” with a prescription; some plans do. Breast prostheses and reconstruction after mastectomy are protected under the federal Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act for most group health plans that cover mastectomy.

The Society runs 31 Hope Lodge locations with about 1,100 private rooms across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. A stay is free regardless of income. Lodges serve people in active treatment, typically outpatient care, who live more than 40 miles or about an hour from their treatment center, and most expect a caregiver to stay with the patient. The program began in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1970 and now provides hundreds of thousands of free nights each year.

The catch is geography. Hope Lodges are in specific cities near major cancer centers, and the West Coast doesn’t have one yet. Stanford Health Care announced this spring that it is working with the Society on a Bay Area Hope Lodge, which would be the first on the West Coast, with the location and opening date still being determined. San Antonio is listed as a capital campaign in progress. If you’re treated somewhere without a lodge, the Society can check whether you qualify for free or reduced-rate nights through its hotel partner, Extended Stay America, which also uses a 40-mile distance rule and an ACS eligibility check.

Road To Recovery matches patients with trained volunteer drivers who pick them up, take them to a cancer-related appointment and bring them home, at no cost. It’s available only in some communities, because it depends on local volunteers, so the first call tells you whether your area is covered. A caregiver may need to ride along if the patient is under 18 or can’t walk without help.

The detail most people miss is timing. The Society says arranging a ride can take several business days, so calling the night before won’t work. In our read of the program rules, the best approach is to book every ride you already know about, such as a whole radiation block, in one call. If volunteers aren’t available near you, ask the helpline about local transportation grants the Society funds through partner hospitals, and check the other options below.

Copay funds have one frustrating habit: they open and close. A fund for your diagnosis may be closed when you check, then reopen weeks later when donations come in. TotalAssist lets you sign up for alerts when a fund opens, and HealthWell lists its open and closed funds online. Checking both every couple of weeks, and asking your infusion center’s financial counselor to watch for openings, is often what separates people who get help from people who don’t.

The planner prices driving at 30 cents a mile for fuel and wear, an illustrative figure you can mentally adjust for your car. The medical-expense mileage figure uses the IRS medical rate of 23.5 cents a mile, which took effect July 1 (it was 20.5 cents earlier in the year). Medical expenses, including that mileage and up to $50 a night per person for qualifying lodging, can be deducted only if you itemize and only above 7.5% of your adjusted gross income, so for many households the deduction is small. The savings column assumes a Hope Lodge or partner hotel covers your nights and a volunteer covers your driving, which is the best case.

With the defaults, 12 trips a month at 120 miles each, six nights away and moderate copays, the treatment gap comes out to well over $2,000 a month before lost income is even counted. That’s the kind of number we found helps people take the first phone call seriously.

Medicare Part D now has a hard ceiling on what you pay for covered drugs each year: $2,100 this year, rising to $2,400 next year, with the standard deductible rising from $615 to $700. If you take an expensive oral cancer drug, you may hit the cap in January. The Medicare Prescription Payment Plan lets you spread those costs into monthly bills from your plan instead of paying large amounts at the pharmacy; if you opt in at the start of the year, the most you’d pay in any month is about one-twelfth of the cap.

Next year also brings Medicare-negotiated prices on 15 more drugs, including several used in cancer care such as Ibrance, Xtandi, Pomalyst and Calquence. Open enrollment, which started October 15, is the time to check that your plan still covers your drugs at a preferred pharmacy, because some Medicare Advantage plans are leaving areas or cutting benefits. Call Medicare at 800-633-4227 or use the plan finder before December 7.

Keep a simple call log for every organization: the date, the person’s name, what they promised and the reference number. When we compared the application steps for the programs in this guide, almost all of them asked for the same handful of documents: proof of diagnosis from your oncology team, insurance cards, recent pay stubs or benefit letters, and your most recent tax return. Scanning those once into a single folder on your phone saves hours later.