Watch CBS News

$50,000 Prisoner Prescription: Inmates Get Expensive Hepatitis C Treatment

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — There's a disease running rampant and the cost of treating it is astronomical.

Hepatitis C is one of the most common diseases and can carry a death sentence.

The cost of fighting it runs into the tens-of-thousands of dollars.

But with tight budgets there's debate on whether prison inmates be given the most expensive, top-of-the-line medications?

It's a question of responsible compassion.

"I was living, at one point in my time, in my life, as a youth pretty recklessly," Paul Sousa admits with quiet candor.

Life for Sousa was filled with drug use.

He says it was destiny; he just did what he saw his mother, and the other relatives who raised him, do – they were hippies who loved to party.

And the party didn't end when, in 1992, Sousa tested positive for Hepatitis C.

"It just kept popping up and I just knew I just knew that I had to have had it," he says. "And then I found out that I did; it was no surprise."

He lived with the disease until 2007, when he made the decision to turn his life around; get off the drugs and rid his body of the deadly disease.

Hepatitis C is one of the most prevalent diseases in California's prison system; it's usually spread by sharing needles used for drugs and tattoos.

More than 15,000 have tested positive, and about 400 are being treated, most with older, but effective medications.

"We make them wards of the state we have some responsibility to safeguard their health," points out Dr. John Zweifler, Deputy Medical Executive, Field Operations, Central Area, for California Correctional Health Care Services.

Dr. Zweifler oversees the Hep-C care of California's inmates.

He also sits on the Hep-C oversight committee, the very one that decided to add two brand new drugs to their approved list of medications.

Those meds, Boceprevir and Telaprevir, can add more than $50,000 per course-of-treatment, per inmate.

Dr. Zweifler defends their practice, saying "we focus our Hepatitis C care on those patients who have more advanced disease but are [also] those most likely to benefit from the treatment."

The new meds are said to double the Hep-C eradication success rate from 35 percent to 70 percent.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is now treating 50 inmates with either of them, adding an estimated 2.5 million dollars to their already expensive treatment.

The CDCR began in October of 2012, so it's too early to tell if they're effective.

"We haven't seen anything that would still in our mind justify the more expensive treatment when there are less expensive alternatives out there," argues Jon Coupal, of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Coupal also points out that the inequality for some honest, hard-working people whose own insurance plans won't cover these high-cost meds.

"Convicted felons, some of very heinous crimes, of getting a standard of care or healthcare significantly higher than they're getting themselves."

"My perspective on someone who's been behind the walls and been inside that system and so I understand it very clearly," says Sousa.

Yes, Sousa was incarcerated.

He did time in San Quentin, but today he says he's clean, sober and a certified counselor at C.O.R.E. Medical Clinic in Sacramento.

He says many of those inmates would have qualified for free Hep-C medications on the outside before going to prison.

"So you would think that if they were going to be eligible for that if they were free, then why deny that to someone, access, to those medicines just because they're incarcerated."

Just a one month supply of Telaprevir costs the CDCR more than $18,056.50 on top of the other medications used with it.

"We recognize that it is a very expensive medication and we want to use it judiciously," says Dr. Zweifler. "But on the other hand we want to prevent significant illness in our population."

"If these treatments are applied, whether or not some of the inmates will re-contract the disease … have the taxpayers just wasted $50,000" asks Coupal.

The CDCR says if an inmate is re-infected they will likely begin another round of pricey treatment, but only after waiting at least a year.

The idea is to pay now, or a lot more later.

"Cirrhosis and liver cancer down the road, which are also extremely difficult and expensive to treat," says Dr. Zweifler.

As someone who's watched family and his own clients die from both, Sousa agrees.

"It makes financial sense to treat these people.  I don't care who it is."

Federal courts have ordered California lawmakers to improve medical care in the state's correctional facilities.

Dr. Zweifler says the CDCR bases its treatment on national guidelines set by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.

May 19 has been designated as a national Hepatitis Test Day.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.