i've gone through TWO protocols, and i'd rather die than try a third
Posted on 12/10/2016 8:20:29 PM PST by fightin kentuckian
I've noticed a lot of commercials about Hep C. The current one tells Baby Boomers to get tested and an earlier one was talking about a cure for Hep C. This is starting to sound like some government conspiracy. And, I'm not a doctor but I didn't think that a virus could be cured.
There are two big spikes in hepatitis C. One is from the aging baby boomers who experimented with drugs in their youth before they straightened up their act. The second is what I call the Obama generation, younger people realizing that unless they networked at Harvard or Yale they’re doomed to live in a soul crushing bureaucracy that affords them no chance to achieve the wealth of their parents.
The new drugs are game changers with very high success rates and very low side effect profiles. Whether they should be priced so high is a question I’m not qualified to answer.
Yes... they're pushing it heavily to the Medicare audience while the retail price is still at $80K... so the taxpayers get to pay for it. People like me who buy their own insurance can't get it... no insurance company covers any of it at all.
I'm hoping in a couple of years it'll become affordable for the middle class folks.
The commercial is ridiculous- they all look like they are on vacation. An in-law (baby boomer) had hep-c from iv drug use in the 60’s. She underwent a chemo treatment a few years ago. She does not look like the happy, healthy people in the commercials.
My best friend died from cirrosis from Hep C. Never a drug user and married since she was 19. They figured she got it from a needle prick when she worked as a nurses aid at a hospital. Before the days of disposables, etc.
Gilead’s Sovaldi.
“It can be cured (not all strains) and now they have a drug that doesn’t nearly kill you in the process.”
OK, to me this is the post of the thread. You explained things very succinctly.
BTW, let me just say “GOOD JOB!” to the guys who got the website back up so quickly. Thanks!
It’s just that a new drug came out and they want the libs to take advantage of it.
i've gone through TWO protocols, and i'd rather die than try a third
Look on the right side of this link for a listing of articles pertaining to hepatitis c.
http://articles.mercola.com/hepatitis-c/prevention.aspx
The new 12 week treatment isn’t even an inconvenience!
Check it out.
Cured me and I must have had it for 40 years, though no symptoms.
“My best friend died from cirrosis from Hep C. Never a drug user and married since she was 19. They figured she got it from a needle prick when she worked as a nurses aid at a hospital. Before the days of disposables, etc.”
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Sorry to hear that.
Is Hep C something that lies dormant for decades?
Hepatitis B and C are endemic in Japan and run generationally in certain families, including my wife’s. It is passed from mother to child at childbirth. Often there are no symptoms until the person eventually develops liver cancer, usually in their forties or fifties, and then dies. I don’t think that this was understood until maybe the 1970s, it was just that some Japanese families had a high incidence of liver cancer.
My wife was tested and it was determined that she had been exposed, presumably at birth from her mother, but her antibodies had beaten it back so she doesn’t have the virus lurking in her now. Her mother also had no symptoms and lived into her eighties, so it must have stayed latent in her mom. She probably got it from her mother at birth.
As for how it started, Japan began widespread public hypodermic injections for treatment of schistosomiasis in the early 1900s. (My wife’s family is from Fukuoka, one of the places schistosomiasis was prevalent—you got it through the parasites being in the rice paddies where people were cultivating rice.) It is hypothesized that the vaccinations were done with improperly cleaned needles, and that is how hepatitis was first spread and in some families it then was passed from generation to generation. Essentially they were carriers although they did not demonstrate symptoms (until they developed liver cancer).
One of the most famous victims of Japanese hepatitis was Edwin Reischauer, the American Japan scholar who was attacked and wounded by a deranged knife wielder in Japan and then had to have blood transfusions, and thereafter developed acute Hep C, which had presumably come from tainted blood donors in the transfusions. It took him some 20 or 30 years to die from the disease.
Its due to heroin addiction rising and dating apps
They have no symptoms until extensive scarring of the liver makes them sick.
Still much cheaper than a liver transplant.
the last two times i had excellent ins with only a six dollar co-pay for prescriptions, now, even if i wanted to i couldn't afford it
What’s behind the commercials?
In essence, the new generation of therapies are so successful (98%+ cure rate), that the manufacturers (Gilead and Abbvie) are running out of patients, and revenues are declining.
Sorry to hear that. Got mine through the VA.
There are programs by the manufacturers that provide the treatment for cheap or free that you should look into.
The old imterferon based treatments were horrible.
First post wondered how expensive it was(NEMDF??). Just posted expense. Agree liver transplant/partial is a long wait list, full liver is longer. I read in some countries the drug(s) are only about $1,000 but have no verification on it.
My brother was treated. He says he thinks he knows how he contracted the Hep C. The treatment was about $100,000 using insurance. So I figure the insurance companies are the ones that made the money.
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