More than a century after sickle-cell disease was first diagnosed, advances in gene therapy are poised to make it not just treatable but curable.
But technology is only one part of medicine. The treatments wonโt be cheap, and many of the people who need them the most are on the fringes of a medical system that has marginalized them.
Sickle-cell disease traces the deep, long-standing inequities of American society. Defeating it will require confronting them.
The N.I.H. gave Scott Ramsey, a health economist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, a grant to examine the long-term budgetary picture for sickle-cell gene therapies.
Although itโs hard to say exactly how many people will qualify for the therapies, Ramsey estimates that some twenty to thirty thousand Americans could be eligible for them, placing a strain on budgets at insurance companies and Medicaid agencies.
Share this article
At the same time, the lifetime medical costs for a patient with sickle-cell disease often exceed two million dollars.ย
…
Medicaid programs, which cover about half of sickle-cell patients in the U.S., differ state by state.
Some states with relatively large Black populations have among the most constrained budgets, and may place especially stringent restrictions on who can access gene therapies and when.
