US senator calls on VA to acquire life-saving hepatitis C drug

US Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent, Vermont) has asked the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to invoke emergency powers to make expensive hepatitis C drugs available at affordable prices to treat tens of thousands of veterans now being denied the most effective care.

The VA recently stopped enrolling veterans in successful new treatments for the often deadly liver disease because the department already had spent the more than $400 million it had budgeted for the costly drugs, the Senator noted on a website posting

The high-profit hepatitis C drugs are among the most expensive medications on the market. Us biotech giant Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD) makes two of the new blockbuster medications and charges $1,000 per pill. That adds up to $84,000 over the course of caring for a single patient, he noted, saying that, even with a discount, the large VA health care system still drained its budget for treating hepatitis C.