Medicare continues to pay in more severe anemia where the level is 10 or less.

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These are often very expensive, injectable medicines used for hard-to-treat diseases like cancer, severe anemia and rheumatoid arthritis.

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Another example occurred between 2001 and 2003, when a biological to treat anemia called Eprex (chemical name, erythropoietin), a supposedly identical version of a sibling called Epogen (which was manufactured in a different facility), caused a 30-fold increase in a severe kind of anemia.

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