Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy has some reservations about a plan Louisiana Department of Health Secretary Rebecca Gee is mulling to drive down the high cost of drugs needed to treat hepatitis C.
As The Washington Post reports, the virus ravishes the liver and there are only a handful of very effective, expensive treatments available to diagnosed with the disease.
Gee is considering whether to ask the federal government to invoke a law that allows the government to override drug patents for its own purposes. If the federal government used this authority—referred to as “marching-in”—it could pay drug companies a small fraction of the current cost of the drug.
But Cassidy, a liver doctor, isn’t so sure about Gee’s plan.
The Washington Post story notes that his experience as a physician gives him an unusual perspective among politicians when thinking about health care. And the dilemmas states are likely to face if Medicaid’s federal funding is cut are already hitting Louisiana—especially in terms of of treating Medicaid patients with hepatitis C.
From his years as a doctor, Cassidy knows the tremendous human and financial cost if the virus progresses to the point where a patient needs a transplant. But he also sees how quickly medicine has progressed: Early in his medical career, there wasn’t even a test for hepatitis C; today, there are safe and effective cures.
To Cassidy, The Washington Post says, it’s important to ensure that future innovations and breakthroughs in medicine will continue.
“My concern about marching-in is that we would quell that sort of innovation,” Cassidy says. “I think we would be foolish to think that might not be the case. And once you march-in once, it lowers the threshold to march-in on another, so I’m very concerned about that.”
