Gov. Bill Lee is seeking nearly $25 million to treat hepatitis C in prisons over the next year. The contagious liver disease can be serious and spreads through contact with the blood of an infected person.

Finance Commissioner Stuart McWhorter told a Senate panel Tuesday about the new budget item. He noted that the drug to treat hepatitis is expensive,
nearly $90,000 for a full regimen or roughly
$1,000 per pill, and the Department of Correction has identified many more prisoners in need of treatment.

“Although it’s a lot of money, it really doesn’t address the full population that Correction has identified,” McWhorter says. “We believe that we’ll probably be back next year with another request — hopefully not as much as this, though.”

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Tennessee Lawmaker Fears Hepatitis C Outbreak Could Jump Prison Walls

The Lee administration would shift $25 million from the proposed school voucher program that’s working its way through the General Assembly. McWhorter says that money is not needed next year, under the
current version of the voucher plan.

Tennessee prisons have struggled to stop the spread of hepatitis C since at least as far back as 2016. Up until then, the virus was largely going untreated in Tennessee prisons,
according to a Tennessean investigation. At the time, nearly half of the 900 inmates who were tested came back with confirmed cases, and only eight were receiving treatment.