Federal Support for Poor HIV/AIDS Patients: Too Little, Too Late?

A few days ago, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that her agency would reallocate $25 million to help states provide life-saving drugs for patients with HIV and AIDS. Specifically, the money will go to states in which there are wait lists for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) — a federal program that serves a large number of poor Americans. (Of the more than 168,000 people who received medications through the program in 2009, about 45 percent had incomes below the poverty level, and all but two percent had incomes less than four times the poverty level.)

It's clear that the Obama administration needed to do something to help HIV/AIDS patients, considering that the disease is still a major problem in this country, and an increasing number of people have lost their health insurance — along with their jobs — and are therefore unable to afford the antiretroviral treatments that have made HIV/AIDS a somewhat manageable disease. Indeed, many people have lived long lives with HIV, but they have done so to the tune of about $12,000 per person per year, on average. So it's no wonder that ADAP wait lists have surged to record levels in a dozen states around the country, including Florida, which has the nation's third-highest HIV/AIDS caseload.

The question is whether the administration is doing enough. Twenty-five million dollars is a lot of money — more than I'll ever be able to give to support AIDS patients, that's for sure. But a lot of AIDS advocates don't think it's nearly enough. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, for instance, issued a statement denouncing the reallocated funds as "too little, too late." The group noted that the $25 million in federal money will barely be enough to cover a year's worth of drugs for the more than 2,000 people currently sitting on ADAP wait lists, and therefore doesn't leave room for any new enrollees or further state budget cuts that could happen down the line. Florida alone expects to add as many as 300 new patients to its wait list each month, so it seems like Sebelius was wrong when she asserted that the money would meet this year's "existing and projected need."

Something is better than nothing, of course, but it's a little disconcerting that some members of the Obama administration actually think this is enough money to address the ADAP crisis. Or worse, maybe they don't actually think it's enough, and they're just BS-ing us and BS-ing patients in need.

Photo credit: margaridaperola