Doctors urge Hepatitis C patients to seek help now due to rising costs

INDIANAPOLIS - Doctors say many who have Hepatitis C don't know it.

There is a new cure, but in part, because of its high cost, insurance companies are looking to cut coverage.

Dr. Steven Norris with Community Health says new drugs to the market are a dramatic game changer for Hepatitis C patients who, until now, endured treatments with multiple side effects and a low 20 percent success rate.

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Hepatitis Pills Contributed to 13 Percent Spike in Drug Spending

Costly new hepatitis pills helped drove a 13 percent increase in drug spending last year among insurer-managed plans in the United States, a rate not seen in more than a decade, according to a report from the pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts.

A course of therapy to treat the liver-damaging hepatitis C virus could cost as much as $150,000 with the approvals of medicines such as Gilead Sciences Inc.’s Sovaldi and Harvoni and Johnson & Johnson’s Olysio, Express Scripts said in the report, released Tuesday. Driven as well by higher costs of specialty and compounded medicines, the estimated drug spend in general for each person in commercial-insured plans was $980 in 2014.

The new hepatitis C medicines are particularly challenging for government health plans and programs.

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Pa. considering moving away from costly Hepatitis C treatment

(Harrisburg) -- Pennsylvania might move away from a stunningly expensive prescription drug treatment for Medicaid patients with Hepatitis C, but the Commonwealth won't save as much as other states.

Missouri is one of the first states to move away from Sovaldi, which costs $1,000 a pill.

Pennsylvania might do the same, but the state's Medicaid program is waiting on final offers from two competitors that provide other drugs recently approved by the FDA for Hepatitis C treatment.

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