BY HUDSON SANGREE
HSANGREE@SACBEE.COM
04/04/2015 11:00 AM
For hepatitis C patients, new drugs introduced in the past two years offer a cure that’s miraculous when compared with former treatments for the potentially fatal virus....
Patients can quickly shell out thousands of dollars before insurance starts to cover a drug’s full cost. Some say the cost sharing discriminates against those with conditions such as hepatitis C, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis by charging more for life-saving treatments....
Insurance companies used to deny coverage or charge high premiums to patients with chronic conditions that were pricey to treat. The federal Affordable Care Act prohibited health plans from discriminating against enrollees with pre-existing conditions...
“There is evidence, however, that insurers are resorting to other tactics to dissuade high-cost patients from enrolling,” researchers Douglas Jacobs and Benjamin Sommers, with the Harvard School of Public Health, wrote in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in January...
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