Imprisoned ex-Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal denied hepatitis C treatment

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Imprisoned ex-Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal denied hepatitis C treatment

• Lawsuit to receive life-saving anti-viral medication dismissed on technicality
• Judge finds Pennsylvania protocol for inmates out of line with constitution

Renée Feltz
Thursday 1 September 2016 13.41 BST

The internationally known imprisoned former Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal has had his request for a life-saving hepatitis C treatment denied by a federal judge.

Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, but maintained his innocence and Amnesty International says he was denied a fair trial. After 30 years on death row, his sentence was overturned on constitutional grounds. He is now serving life without parole, and his supporters have shifted their focus to his access to medical care.

Abu-Jamal sued the state of Pennsylvania to receive anti-viral medication for hepatitis C after he was hospitalized in critical condition last year. Officials told him he was not sick enough to be eligible for the treatment, which has a 90-95% cure rate but costs $1,000 per dose, and is taken once a day for 12 weeks.

On Wednesday US district court judge Robert Mariani said Abu-Jamal’s lawsuit wrongly targeted the warden and the prison system’s medical chief, and should have named the four members of the state’s hepatitis C committee instead. Abu-Jamal’s lawyers say the committee did not exist at the time the lawsuit was filed.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/01/black-panther-mumia-abu-jamal-denied-hepatitis-c-treatment

[ghostsinthemachine]

1. Bummed.

Let's hope that technicality can be corrected

[MattP]

2. This drug is hardly ever approved for anybody

Greed kills

[Cicada]

3. True for CA media-cal also

Medi-cal, the CA medicaid program, also will not pay until the disease progresses to a dangerous level. So I don''t think this case is necessarily unique. This drug is really expensive. If all hep C patients get it then the govt share of the cost will be something like the total cost of all other drugs combined. On the other hand this drug saves money because it eliminates medical treatments costing a lot more than the drug. In the past we have passed a windfall profits tax on very high oil prices. Maybe we need that for some super costly drugs. But would that reduce the number of valuable drugs discovered? It's a hard thing to figure out.