It costs the health system $1.1 billion to treat bowel cancer each year and on average costs $120,000 per patient to treat, the later it is detected the more expensive and invasive it is. On top of that, it costs businesses an average of $580 per day an employee is away which adds up to tens of thousands of dollars an employee is being treated for cancer. Finally, the out of pocket costs add up to thousands including travel, accommodation and loss of income, as well as costs not covered by health providers, depending on the insured status of the patient. To suggest the lives of young people are too expensive to treat who have their whole lives ahead of them and, if in their 30s and 40s, are likely to have children, is the response of a bureaucratic system that only looks at numbers in a spreadsheet. Behind those numbers are people, families, friends, businesses and government services that share the impact of that person's sickness and possible death. Millions are spent on incredibly expensive cancer drugs that are subsidised on the PBS. It would be cheaper to stop the cancer - often detectable before it even becomes a cancer - than to allow it to go undetected in under 50s. And on top of this, 53% of bowel cancer deaths occur after age 75. The free government test kit program ends at age 74.