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Federal funding remains flat while need for HIV care grows

Federal funding remains flat while need for HIV care grows
WASHINGTON, DC - This week, in the first step toward funding domestic AIDS programs for 2006, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education neglected to provide funding increases to domestic AIDS programs even as the need for HIV care in the U.S. continues to grow. Based on the Subcommittees suggested allocations for FY2006, almost all of the domestic HIV/AIDS programs including the Ryan White CARE Act, the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), the NIH Office of AIDS Research, Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA), the Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative (MAI) and various comprehensive prevention programs at the CDC will be significantly under-funded for the fourth year in a row. The CDC reports seeing at least 40,000 people newly infected with HIV every year; and with HIV/AIDS patients living longer lives - thanks to remarkable innovations in drug therapy, medical care, and treatment - there are more U.S. citizens than ever living with the disease. Unfortunately, many men, women, and children infected with HIV disease are among the poorest and neediest in the country. Additionally, patients who do not qualify for increasingly burdened Medicaid or Medicare plans rely on Ryan White programs for their medical needs, including prescriptions costing about $12,000 per year. Ryan White programs, overall, have been flat-funded or cut over the last four appropriations cycles, and the AIDS Drug Assistance Program has received only nominal increases that do not respond to the growing need for these services. The House has made no allowance for the fact that more and more people are dependent on cash-strapped, resource-starved programs, noted Greg Smiley, Director of Public Policy for the American Academy of HIV Medicine (Academy). With Medicaid programs starting to buckle, and with an additional $10 billion in additional cuts expected this fall, lifeline discretionary programs like ADAP can only handle so much stress. The Academys Executive Director, Howard Grossman, M.D., deplores, the potential for many patients to fall out of treatment because of perennially under-funded care programs. Consequently, these individuals become sicker, their care gets more expensive, and the rate of preventable new infections increases. For many involved in the congressional appropriations process it is merely a number-crunching exercise that happens inside the beltway, while were looking at the very real possibility that real people our sickest patients will have to be sent away without even the most basic primary medical care. Its no exaggeration to say that flat-funding will lead to flat-lining of patients, laments Dr. Grossman. American Academy of HIV Medicine news release