Hepatitis C can cause serious liver damage and kills about 15,000 people in the United States each year.
James Cavallini/BSIP/Universal Images
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James Cavallini/BSIP/Universal Images
Hepatitis C can cause serious liver damage and kills about 15,000 people in the United States each year.
James Cavallini/BSIP/Universal Images
Ten years ago, a safe and effective treatment for hepatitis C became available.
These tablets are easy-to-take oral antivirals with few side effects. 95% of patients who take them are cured. Treatment is also expensive, costing between $20 and $25,000 per course.
new report A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that over the past decade, many people diagnosed with hepatitis C were denied curative treatment due to high drug costs, combined with limited coverage by insurance companies.
The CDC estimates that 2.4 million people in the United States have hepatitis C. Hepatitis C is a liver disease caused by a virus. Spread By contact with the blood of an infected person. Currently, the most common route of transmission in the United States is through sharing needles and syringes used to inject drugs. It can also be transmitted sexually or through childbirth. Untreated, it can lead to severe liver damage and liver cancer, and it kills about 15,000 people in the United States each year.
“We have the tools to eliminate Hep C domestically,” he says Dr. Carolyn Wester“It’s important that we have the will as a society to ensure that these resources are available to all people with hepatitis C,” said the director of the CDC’s Division of Viral Hepatitis.
Limited access due to high costs and insurance restrictions
According to CDC analysis, only 34% of people known to have hepatitis C in the past decade were cured or cleared of the virus. In the United States, he has nearly 1 million people with undiagnosed hepatitis C. More than 500,000 people diagnosed with hepatitis C in the last 10 years go untreated.
Wester says insurance companies “get in the way of people and doctors” because of the drug’s high cost. Some private insurance companies and state Medicaid programs do not allow patients to receive drugs until they have seen a specialist, refrained from using drugs, or have reached an advanced stage of liver disease.
“These restrictions are not in line with medical guidance. The national recommendation for hepatitis C treatment is that everyone with hepatitis C should be cured,” Wester said.
To address the problem of slowing uptake of Hep-C treatment, the Biden administration proposed: National Hepatitis C Eradication Programled by Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health.
“This program will prevent the development of liver cancer and liver failure. Thousands of lives will be saved, and will be more than offset by future healthcare cost savings,” Collins said in a CDC call with reporters on Thursday. said at the meeting.
The plan proposes a subscription model to increase access to HEPC drugs, and the government will negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to agree on lump-sum payments, “and then enroll in Medicaid.” We will make medicine available free of charge to everyone, the uninsured, and anyone with medical insurance.” Either in prison or on a Native American reservation,” Collins said, adding that this Hep-C drug model is being successfully tested in Louisiana.
for 5 years, $11.3 billion program It is currently under consideration in parliament.
