Loosening Medicaid restrictions on hep C drugs could improve patient access, study finds

While state Med­ic­aid pro­grams have in­creas­ing­ly loos­ened cov­er­age re­stric­tions on he­pati­tis C drugs in re­cent years, a team of re­searchers at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty re­cent­ly pub­lished a study find­ing that a fur­ther eas­ing of re­stric­tions could im­prove up­take.

In a pa­per pub­lished in JA­MA on Fri­day, the re­searchers ex­am­ined 39 Med­ic­aid pro­grams be­tween 2015 and 2020, 32 of which eased re­stric­tions on di­rect-act­ing an­tivi­rals to treat he­pati­tis C. Med­ic­aid pro­grams had ini­tial­ly set re­stric­tions on cov­er­age of the an­tivi­rals be­cause they were ex­pen­sive, but over the years cov­er­age has ex­pand­ed as prices have come down and in re­sponse to lit­i­ga­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy.

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