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Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

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Re: Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

#111

Post by jjtheblunt »

hep_c_throwaway wrote: post #62

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. Like many of you, I'm a young and healthy guy. I haven't taken a sick day in years. Since I'm young and healthy, I didn't see the need to take an annual physical exam. Scheduling doctor's appointments is such a hassle. I'm sure many of you feel the same. So when I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, it came as a complete shock to me. The shock was due to two reasons: 1. I wasn't inv…

So what do they conjecture was the means of contracting it? Excellent write-up, btw, and thanks for it. Totally agree with use-what's-been-paid-for regarding checkups, as it's a win-win all around, for everyone.

Re: Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

#112

Post by lukeschlather »

troydavis wrote: post #63
lukeschlather wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. After they cured so many people, there was a much smaller market (success!). Revenue and margin both dropped a lot: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GILD/gilead-scienc... . This seems like a pretty clear example of why looking at revenue and margin like this is not a good way to manage this. Our goal here is clearly to eliminate the market for this product, and everyone ought to chip in to make that hap…

> The whole funding model is fundamentally broken. That's a totally reasonable point (and perhaps worth starting a separate top-level reply about), but it's not at all what the GP comment was arguing.

It depends on your definition of price gouging. You're defining price gouging as having the price reflect the marginal cost of the drug. I (and I think GP as well) would define price gouging a little more broadly and say simply that it's setting the price unreasonably high. Since marginal cost is not a reasonable pricing mechanism to achieve the desired goal, It's not a good basis for an argument that the price is reasonable and not gouging.

Re: Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

#113

Post by dajohnson89 »

pc86 wrote: post #96
deith wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro-tip: it doesn't actually cost $500K-1M to transplant a liver (which you get for free).

Do you have a source for this?

I think he means we're all born with a liver. And transplanting your liver is a matter of walking.

Re: Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

#114

Post by amelius »

hep_c_throwaway wrote: post #62

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. Like many of you, I'm a young and healthy guy. I haven't taken a sick day in years. Since I'm young and healthy, I didn't see the need to take an annual physical exam. Scheduling doctor's appointments is such a hassle. I'm sure many of you feel the same. So when I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, it came as a complete shock to me. The shock was due to two reasons: 1. I wasn't inv…

If I tell this to my doc he'll just explain me the risks of preventive screening.

Re: Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

#115

Post by nabnob »

hep_c_throwaway wrote: post #62

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. Like many of you, I'm a young and healthy guy. I haven't taken a sick day in years. Since I'm young and healthy, I didn't see the need to take an annual physical exam. Scheduling doctor's appointments is such a hassle. I'm sure many of you feel the same. So when I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, it came as a complete shock to me. The shock was due to two reasons: 1. I wasn't inv…

Do you have any theory about how you caught hep-c?

What's your experience with treatment? Did your insurance cover it?

Re: Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

#116

Post by juskrey »

hep_c_throwaway wrote: post #62

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. Like many of you, I'm a young and healthy guy. I haven't taken a sick day in years. Since I'm young and healthy, I didn't see the need to take an annual physical exam. Scheduling doctor's appointments is such a hassle. I'm sure many of you feel the same. So when I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, it came as a complete shock to me. The shock was due to two reasons: 1. I wasn't inv…

Sounds like typical advertisement of modern anxiety and fear dealers. Every medical interaction, including screening and even friendly talk with doctor, has side effects.

Re: Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

#117

Post by adamsea »

juskrey wrote: post #116
hep_c_throwaway wrote: post #62

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. Like many of you, I'm a young and healthy guy. I haven't taken a sick day in years. Since I'm young and healthy, I didn't see the need to take an annual physical exam. Scheduling doctor's appointments is such a hassle. I'm sure many of you feel the same. So when I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, it came as a complete shock to me. The shock was due to two reasons: 1. I wasn't inv…

Sounds like typical advertisement of modern anxiety and fear dealers. Every medical interaction, including screening and even friendly talk with doctor, has side effects.

I feel you but let’s not forget that there are simultaneously both “fear doctors” and legitimate sources of anxiety and concern which stem from our present way of life.

Re: Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

#118

Post by [deleted] »

dpark wrote: post #44
ameister14 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans wouldn't end up paying the 84k. Their insurance would pay for most of that, and negotiate it down further - the other day I was picking up a drug that without insurance would cost over $1,000. I paid $34.

That’s garbage. People without insurance are utterly fucked. The uninsured are sacrificed as a negotiating point against insurers. “List price is $5000. We’ll cut you a deal at only $2000!”

[deleted]

Re: Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

#119

Post by hep_c_throwaway »

ethbro wrote: post #83
shaftoe wrote: post #12

I get their point about stigma, but as someone who has never injected drugs, I'm having a hard time caring about getting screened for this. How do they intend to actually roll out a massive testing operation (everyone under 80) when likely most people hear the details and respond with "meh, not me"?

From a public health perspective, recommendations and guidelines like this drive insurance company policies and government funding priorities. Or in other words, the things that actually move the needle when you're trying to get something done for an appreciable percentage of citizens. There's no ability and need to test everyone today, but this is a sign that we should move to more regular screening of higher percen…

>There's no ability and need to test everyone today, but this is a sign that we should move to more regular screening of higher percentages of the population.

Signs of Hepatitis C, along with most liver diseases, can be caught with the standard liver enzyme tests that's available in pretty much every lab in the developed world.

To be specific, if you see your doctor and it's been more than 6 month since your last visit, then it's standard procedure to take a blood test. Your doctor will take out a pre-printed form that's commonly called "laboratory requisition form" or "assay requisition form", fill out the patient information and tick a few boxes. If they ticked the "ALT" box, then they have ordered the necessary liver enzyme tests. Quoting Wikipedia: "Significantly elevated levels of ALT (SGPT) often suggest the existence of other medical problems such as viral hepatitis, diabetes, congestive heart failure, liver damage, bile duct problems, infectious mononucleosis, or myopathy, so ALT is commonly used as a way of screening for liver problems."[1]

Here's a Kaiser Permanente laboratory requisition form[2] with the ALT checkbox. Here's a Quebec health provider that include ALT in their general profile test #1 through #4 [3].

Testing for Hepatitis C directly is also widely available. Since it's a public health hazard, most state and national governments in the developed world has setup free testing programs. For example, I Googled "california hep c testing" and this page[4] is the third result. They offer _free_ Hepatitis C tests with the results available in 20 minutes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alanine_transaminase

[2] http://testinfo.kaiserpermanente.org/info_assets/cpp_ga/pdfs...

[3] https://www.dynacare.ca/DYN/media/DYN/Pdf/Print%20a%20Form/G...

[4] https://www.sfaf.org/services/sexual-health-and-testing/hiv-...

Re: Hepatitis C kills more Americans than all other infectious diseases combined

#120

Post by at_a_remove »

xvilka wrote: post #19

Does anyone know what research is being done on creating the vaccine and what are the causes that prevented creating one?

Wikipedia has a brief summary, but it is a similar issue as we see with colds and HIV: a highly variable exterior shell for the virus. About six years back, scientists found one region that is mostly "conserved," the docking station that latches onto a particular receptor in liver cells.

Hepatitis C, like HIV, comes in different groups, and it has six to target.

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