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The state’s Medicaid program announced Thursday it is lifting restrictions that prevented many patients from getting powerful drugs that can cure hepatitis C, after negotiating new discounts from two manufacturers. The changes at MassHealth, as the program is known, take effect Aug. 1.
The agreement lowers the cost of three brands of a new class of drugs that are highly effective against the liver-destroying virus — but are expensive.
As a result, MassHealth will pay for Harvoni, a drug from Gilead Sciences, for 80 percent of its members who are infected with hepatitis C, a virus transmitted through the blood, most often when intravenous drug users share needles.
About 20 percent of MassHealth members will have access to another Gilead drug, Sovaldi, or to Bristol-Myers Squibb’s drug Daklinza.