Louisiana considers radical step to counter high drug prices: Federal intervention
Source: Washington Post
Louisiana considers radical step to counter high drug prices: Federal intervention
By Carolyn Y. Johnson July 3 at 6:53 PM
BATON ROUGE In this city on the east bank of the Mississippi River, Rebekah Gee, Louisianas health secretary, presides over what she calls the public-health-crisis cradle of America. Poverty and poor health collide here to produce some of the nations worst rates of obesity, premature birth and other maladies.
Those problems are deep-rooted and hard to solve. The easy one, at least in theory, is hepatitis C, a liver-damaging virus frequently contracted by injection-drug users that can cause cirrhosis and cancer.
A handful of powerful new medicines offer high cure rates and few side effects. But because the drugs also launched with staggering list prices as much as $94,500 for a 12-week course of treatment Louisiana and other states have decided to ration care to Medicaid patients, waiting for people to get severe liver damage before providing access to the medicine.
Now, Gee is considering a radical move to get treatment to the thousands of Louisiana residents who need it but are not sick enough to qualify asking the federal government to step in to drive prices down, perhaps by overriding the patent protections drug companies hold over the medicines.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/louisiana-considers-radical-step-to-counter-high-drug-prices-federal-intervention/2017/07/03/456b99f6-4a59-11e7-a186-60c031eab644_story.html