White women diagnosed with the disease were just as likely to die as black women diagnosed with the disease. Thanks to improvements in screening and treatment, the U.S. breast cancer death rate dropped 39% between 1989 to 2015, according to the American Cancer Society. A 2013 study attributed most of the excess breast cancer deaths in black women to more aggressive tumors and accompanying illnesses than in white women diagnosed with the disease. About 41,000, women are expected to die from breast cancer this year, the cancer society says, making it the second leading cause of cancer death in women after lung cancer, which is expected to kill about 71,000 women in 2017. Their age made them eligible for Medicare, so black women and white women had relatively uniform health-care coverage, he said.

Source: Forbes October 17, 2017 18:31 UTC