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According to a study published in the January 3, 2007 issue of Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the hours spent in cancer treatment – not including the cost of the treatment itself – amounts to a national price tag of at least $2.3 billion in the first year of treatment alone. The study, conducted by The National Cancer Institute from the records of 763,000 cancer patients covered by Medicare, estimates that lung cancer patients lose approximately 272 hours to actively receiving cancer care. This includes time spent in doctors’ waiting rooms and receiving chemotherapy, but does not count time at home in bed recovering from surgery or the side effects of chemo treatment. To reach the $2.3 billion figure, NCI researchers focused their research on eleven of the most common cancers and assigned a monetary value of $15.23 per hour, based on the median U.S. wage rate in 2002.