The ACLU is currently investigating the treatment that the State of Kansas renders to Medicaid enrollees and prison inmates who are diagnosed with Chronic Hepatitis C—the Hepatitis C Virus (“HCV”). HCV is the most deadly infectious disease in this country, killing more than the next 60 infectious diseases combined. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) estimates that nearly 20,000 deaths were associated with HCV in 2014 and that approximately five million individuals in the United States are infected with HCV, accounting for over one percent of the population. In 2011, an estimated 34,000 Kansans suffered from Hepatitis C.
Since 2013, the federal Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) has approved the use of direct-acting antiviral drugs (“DDA Drugs”) to treat people infected with HCV. DDA Drugs include those with the following trade names:
- Zepatier® (elbasvir/grazoprevir)
- Daklinza® (daclatasvir)
- Epclusa® (sofosbuvir/velpatasvir)
- Harvoni® (ledipasvir/sofosbuvir)
- Sovaldi® (sofosbuvir)/Olysio® (simprevir) in combination
- Technivie® (ombitasvir/paritaprev/ritonavir)
- Viekira Pak® (dasabuvir/ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir)
- Viekira XR® (dasabuvir/ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir)
However, the ACLU believes that the State of Kansas, through the state administered Medicaid system and Kansas Department of Corrections, has refused to provide persons infected with HCV with the DAA Drugs therapy unless they have more advanced liver disease, usually documented by a Fibrosis score of F3 or F4.
The American Association for the Study of Liver Disease and the Infectious Disease Society of America have established a guideline representing the "standard of care" in the United States for the treatment of HCV. http://hcvguidelines.org/treatment-naive . According to this evidence-based, expert-developed guideline, DAA Drugs are now “recommended for all patients with chronic HCV infection,” with the narrow exception of patients “with short life expectancies that cannot be remediated by treating HCV, by transplantation, or by other directed therapy.”
Persons infected with HCV can experience serious symptoms, including kidney disease, hypertension, lymphoma, intractable fatigue, joint pain, arthritis, vasculitis, thyroid disease, depression, memory loss, sore muscles, mental changes, heart attacks, diabetes, nerve damage, jaundice, and various cancers.
If you have HCV and you meet all of the following, please contact us using the form below.
- You have a fibrosis score ≤ 2
- You are a Medicaid enrollee or prison inmate
- You have sough but been denied DAA therapy
- You would like to learn more information about efforts to obtain DAA therapy