Hepatitis C treatment underused because of high cost and insurance restrictions : Shots

Hepatitis C can cause severe liver damage and leads to about 15,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.

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Ten years ago, safe and effective treatments for Hepatitis C became available.

These pills are easy-to-take oral antivirals with few side effects. They cure 95% of patients who take them. The treatments are also expensive, coming in at $20 to 25,000 dollars a course.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that the high cost of the drugs, along with coverage restrictions imposed by insurers, have kept many people diagnosed with Hepatitis C from accessing curative treatments in the past decade.

The CDC estimates that 2.4 million people in the U.S. are living with Hepatitis C, a liver disease caused by a virus that spreads through contact with the blood of an infected person. Currently, the most common route of infection in the U.S. is through sharing needles and syringes used for injecting drugs. It can also be transmitted through sex, and via childbirth. Untreated, it can cause severe liver damage and liver cancer, and it leads to some 15,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.

“We have the tools…to eliminate Hep C in our country,” says Dr. Carolyn Wester, director of the CDC’s Division of Viral Hepatitis, “It’s a matter of having the will as a society to make sure these resources are available to all populations with Hep C.”

High cost and insurance restrictions limit access

According to CDC’s analysis, just 34% of people known to have Hep C in the past decade have been cured or cleared of the virus. Nearly a million people in the U.S. are living with…