by Drew Armstrong
There are about 3 million living with hepatitis C in the U.S., many of whom haven’t been diagnosed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gilead’s drugs, and a competing medicine from AbbVie Inc., cure more than 90 percent of those treated. While doctors are seeing patients as fast as they can, they’ve administered the drugs to only a tiny fraction of the patient population. So far this year, Gilead’s drugs have treated about 130,000 in the U.S., and AbbVie’s about 10,000, according to the companies and data compiled by Bloomberg.
Many More Left
That leaves more than 2 million, and possibly many more if the CDC’s estimates are too low. When Gilead talks to doctors, “all of them tell us that they have many patients in the queue, if you like, waiting for treatment,” Paul Carter, Gilead’s executive vice president of commercial operations, said Tuesday on a conference call.
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great as long as you can afford it...my insurance company has denied me twice saying that it is not medically necessary. I have chronic hep c and my liver is functioning too well. How medically ethical and fiscally responsible is it to tell a patient that treatment will only be available when i am sicker? The cost of monitoring over time including blook work, liver unltrasounds, doctor visits is more expensive but who cares? Obviously no one...
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