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Colorado board recommends expanded coverage for hepatitis C drug

A state board recommended Tuesday night that more needy Coloradans receive potentially curative treatments for hepatitis C.

But the board stopped short of recommending that the treatments — new drugs that have been shown to have a 90 percent cure rate — be extended to all Coloradans on Medicaid. And that means the American Civil Liberties Union may file a federal lawsuit against the state to force it to provide treatment to everyone.

“It’s not just the right thing to do,” Mark Silverstein, the legal director for the ACLU in Colorado said at Tuesday’s meeting. “It’s also what’s legally required.