pbs | Walter Bianco has had hepatitis-C for 40 years, and his time is running out.
“The
liver is at the stage next to becoming cirrhotic,” the 65-year-old
Arizona contractor says. Cirrhosis is severe scarring, whether from
alcoholism or a chronic viral infection. It’s a fateful step closer to
liver failure or liver cancer.
If he develops one of these
complications, the only possible solution would be a hard-to-get liver
transplant. “The alternative,” Bianco says, “is death.”
Previous
drug treatments didn’t clear the virus from Bianco’s system. But it’s
almost certain that potent new drugs for hep-C could cure him.
However,
the private insurer that handles his medication coverage for the
federal Medicare program has twice refused to pay for the drugs his
doctor has prescribed.
Doctors are seeing more and more patients
approaching the end-stage of hep-C infection. “There isn’t day that goes
by when I don’t have a story very similar to Mr. Bianco’s,” says Dr.
Hugo Vargas of Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ, his liver specialist.
Researchers estimate that 3 to 5 million Americans carry the
insidious hep-C virus. The biggest concentration is among those born
between 1945 and 1965.
Many, like Bianco, got hep-C from injecting
street drugs in their youth. He says he’s been drug- and alcohol-free
for 32 years, but the infection was permanent.
Other baby boomers
got the virus from transfusions before 1992, a period when blood wasn’t
screened. Some got it from sharing razors or toothbrushes, or from
contaminated tattoo needles or hospital equipment. For some,
transmission was sexual, although fortunately this isn’t the
highest-risk route.
The timing of these infections spells trouble for Medicare, which insures Americans over 65.
