The cost of treating Medicaid patients who suffer from hepatitis C is posing a challenge to Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program.
As new, more expensive, but more effective hepatitis C drugs reach the market, the state’s costs for treating Medicaid patients with the disease have doubled since 2013.
Meanwhile, the state continues to consider at what point in the progression of their hepatitis C Medicaid patients should be offered the most expensive drugs.
Current guidelines are evolving both in the state and nationally, with medical authorities and federal regulators weighing in with their views. Recently, an advisory committee to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services offered its own recommendations for criteria for prescribing the most expensive drugs.
Learn more about the issue, the cost of treatment, and current Pennsylvania Medicaid policy on when hepatitis C patients must be offered the most expensive drugs and how that policy might be changing in this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.