Jesse2233
Senior Member
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From Reddit...
EDIT: he's a patient of Dr Kaufman at OMI
As the researchers in Norway have been showing, Rituxin is becoming pretty much standard treatment for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Anyways, I've been seeing a doctor in the US who wanted to treat me with Rituxin, with one problem - it's exorbitantly expensive. So here were the options:
The doctor said that he had never had anybody try to get the manufacturer to pay for it, as that would require getting your insurance to reject it, and then if the manufacturer DOESN'T pay for it, you're never going to be able to get the insurance to pay for it, no matter what. So it's a risky situation.
- Try to get diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis (getting more and more difficult as time goes on)
- Try to get insurance to pay for Rituxin (impossible) or get the manufacturer (Genentech) to pay for it (extremely unlikely)
- Pay for it out of pocket
Fortunately, I have very generous family who offered to pay for my treatment, so I thought, yeah we might as well try this. So I asked insurance to pay for it (obviously rejected) and then asked the manufacturer, and they agreed to pay for it!
So, this is possibly a huge step for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome treatment in the United States, as it might be possible for lots of people to get this treatment who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it. We're still going to have to pay some money for the hospital bills, but that will be closer to $6,000 than the alternative of $60,000.
If you guys have any questions, let me know!
edit: I guess it's spelled Rituxan, oh well
EDIT: he's a patient of Dr Kaufman at OMI
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