A Virginia health program that provides medications to people with HIV and AIDS is facing a $12.6 million shortfall, as the poor economy and expanded disease treatment has boosted enrollment.
The AIDS Drug Assistance Program provides medications to people who are uninsured or underinsured and do not qualify for Medicaid and serves about 3,900 clients. But the program has been financially stressed when enrollment jumped 21 percent between 2007 and 2009 as a poor economy drove more people into poverty and expanded testing helped identify more people who are HIV positive, said Michele Chesser, senior health policy analyst for the General Assembly’s Joint Commission on Health Care.
“In some respects, it’s a result of doing well” in terms of identifying and treating the disease, she said.
To address the shortfall, an advisory committee recommended that the Virginia Department of Health limit access to antiretroviral medications to certain groups; for example, pregnant women and children under 13.
That kind of change, however, would prevent more than 400 new clients from enrolling and force the program to violate its standards of care.
“I think it’s clear that the need is outpacing our money,” said Kathryn Hafford, Division of Disease Prevention director at the state Department of Health, who called the AIDS initiative a necessary and “very important program.”
One option to paring down the AIDS program would be for the state legislature to add $12.6 million to next year’s budget, but that’s likely to prove difficult given that the state just struggled to close a $4 billion budget deficit.
“This is a serious issue, and I don’t know that there’s really any good way” out of the problem, said Del. David Bulova, D-Fairfax, a member of the health care commission.
There were about 21,000 known cases of HIV infection in Virginia in 2009. One in 1,400 Virginians are infected with the virus and don’t know it, according to the Department of Health.
“A lot of us are concerned that people don’t talk about HIV and AIDS anymore,” said Chesser. “I think people have kind of forgotten that this is an epidemic that still needs to be addressed.”
