Doctors’ Dilemma: Who Gets Costly Cure for Deadly Virus
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Early this year, liver specialist Ken Flora and his colleagues sent letters to 1,300 patients announcing exciting news: powerful new drugs to cure the lethal hepatitis C virus were finally available.
Soon after, some patients received a different message: notices that their health plans were refusing to pay for the $84,000 drug. So far only about 50 of the patients have received the medicine, Gilead Sciences Inc.’s Sovaldi.