BOSTON About 3 years ago, right around his 50th birthday, Robert Deckman discovered out he qualified for MassHealth. So this carpenter from Gloucester did something he had not done in years: He went to the doctor.
“I am like, well, let’s get the 50-year tuneup, the whole 9 yards, just everything,” Deckman said recently, tossing his hands in the air. “The blood work was the last thing I did.”
The blood work indicated that Deckman had hepatitis C, a virus that damages the liver. His doctor delivered great news: A drug coming on the market would nearly certainly cure his disease. And bad news: One bottle of the pills would cost $37,000. Deckman would probably need 2.
“‘I cannot pay that, so I guess I will just die,’ ” Deckman recalled telling the doctor.
The doctor told Deckman insurance should cover Harvoni, the medicine the physician would prescribe, but his insurance contributor might make him “jump through hoops,” the doctor said.
Deckman was refused the very costly life-saving drug twice. His skin turned yellow, his pony tail thinned, he established a skin infection and issues with his teeth. Deckman’s family grew desperate. His sister, Viki Deckman-Moeller, laid out a strategy.
“Plan A was to put a fundraiser together for my brother, and observe if we could, just through friends and family, get few donations,” Deckman-Moeller said. “And then, we were looking at, or I was observing at, going out and getting a loan of some type at a low interest rate, for — it would have been about $50,000 I guess.”
Taking out a loan or pulling out a credit card to pay a health bill is not new. But now, with hep C pills that are $1,000 apiece, cancer drugs priced at $100,000 a year, and gene therapy at almost $1 million per treatment, credit cards or a line of credit at your bank will not be adequate.
MIT professor Andrew Lo and Dr. David Weinstock at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute say It is time to make a long-term health care loan.
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