It may seem that I am running this theme on the totally terrible state of the USA health system at the moment but it is simply that I keep getting emails from desperate US citizens who have no hope at all of getting treatment within the US system and get no support from US doctors.
And the one or two every day that I get must be the tip of the iceberg because so few people in the USA are aware of the “Generic Option” for treating Hep C.
Unlike countries like Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Latvia and so on, the US press has not covered the terrible injustice of access to Hep C treatment and included the generic option in that narrative.
So it is that relatively very few people are aware of the fact that generic Harvoni gives exactly the same cure rates as band Harvoni. Very few people are aware that generic Epclusa gives the same cure rates as brand Epclusa, very few people are aware that generic Sofosbuvir + Daclatasvir gives the same cure rates as Sovaldi and Daklinza.
And it is a fact that generic Hep C treatment gives EXACTLY the same cure rates as the brand versions at about 100th the cost.
Over the past 9 months I have been working with a team of doctors and activists compiling the results of generic treatment. Over 1,000 results are now in and the results confirm the work of Dr James Freeman (published last year) that there is no difference at all between the cure results of Hepatitis C through cheap generics or expensive branded products.
Yet doctors in the USA regularly refuse to even monitor their patients if they choose the generic treatment option.
So here I sit at my desk in a little village in rural Tasmania trying to help people from the richest and most powerful nation on Earth get treatment for a disease that is so easy to cure with medicine that costs less than $100 to make but sells for $80,000 in the USA. What is wrong with the world?
Of course it is not only the USA. Every day I get emails from people in Canada and many other countries who are in the same situation.
At least Canada does offer government funded treatment but it is triaged and people must wait until they get very sick before they get treatment.
Click here to read the 4 February 2017 email that Greg received, along with his response...