More Prison Inmates Get Access to Hepatitis-C Drugs
March 10, 2018
Wall Street Journal
By Peter Loftus
Massachusetts state prison officials agreed to expand treatment for inmates with hepatitis C, in the first settlement among several class-action lawsuits accusing state prison systems of denying many prisoners access to costly drugs.
Drugmakers including Gilead Sciences Inc., AbbVie Inc. and Merck & Co. since 2013 have been selling hepatitis C drugs with higher cure rates than older drugs for the disease. But prices initially were high—between $54,000 and $95,000 per patient for a standard course of treatment using drugs…