"Hepatitis C Cure Eludes Patients As States Struggle With Costs" - Maggie Fox
Hepatitis treatment pits patients against insurance companies and lawmakers against drug makers. States, which cover a huge number of hepatitis sufferers, are stuck with some of the biggest bills. Newly developed direct-acting antiviral drugs can cure up to 95 percent of patients, but the cure comes at a gigantic price. These drugs are notoriously expensive. People can be cured of hepatitis C, but they are not immune from getting it again. Some states fear that people who had been infected through risky behavior, such as injecting drugs, might get re-infected, and they’d end up treating the same patients over and over. That is a shortsighted policy, argued Alyson Harty, RN, clinical nurse manager at the Institute for Liver Medicine at The Mount Sinai Hospital. “Even if a patient doesn’t need a transplant, the cost of cirrhosis care for a patient that’s in and out of the hospital over even a year is way more than the cost of treatment,” she said. Also, taking “supplements can screw up hepatitis C treatments,” said Douglas Dieterich, MD, director of the Institute of Liver Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
- Alyson Harty, RN, Clinical Nurse Manager, The Institute for Liver Medicine, The Mount Sinai Hospital
- Douglas Dieterich, MD, Director, Institute of Liver Medicine, Professor, Liver Disease, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai