AIDS Patients Face Drug Barriers, Activists Say

Tight state budgets and rising drug prices have forced nearly 800 U.S. AIDS patients on to waiting lists for life-saving medicines and the number is likely to grow, physicians and activists said on Tuesday.

Tight state budgets and rising drug prices have forced nearly 800 U.S. AIDS patients on to waiting lists for life-saving medicines and the number is likely to grow, physicians and activists said on Tuesday. While the world’s attention has focused on bringing AIDS medicines to Africa and other poor parts of the globe, barriers to treatment are rising in the United States, they said. Even patients covered by state AIDS Drug Assistance Programs are running into restrictions, such as limits on the numbers of prescriptions they can fill each month, state officials and physicians said. “We’re about to fall into a major crisis” if the trends continue, said Jose Zuniga, president and chief executive of the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care. The physicians group met Tuesday and sought advice on ways to address the pricing issue and lawmakers’ underfunding of drug coverage programs. Concern among physicians and activists grew after Abbott Laboratories raised the price of a key AIDS drug, Norvir, by 400 percent last December, Zuniga and others said. “This is not about blaming industry for the entirety of problems. Certainly pricing is a concern,” Zuniga said. “We need to look at a mixed basket of solutions.” Politicians “are not paying attention anymore,” he added. Pharmaceutical companies say their prices reflect the enormous costs of researching and developing lifesaving medicines. Some patients can receive help from drug makers. Abbott offers Norvir free to anyone without public or private insurance and last year provided free HIV testing to more than 20,000 people, company spokeswoman Laureen Cassidy said. The AIDS Drug Assistance Programs also can buy Norvir at the old price, she said. The annual cost for cocktails of antiviral medicines that suppress the HIV virus that causes AIDS is about $20,000 to $25,000, state officials said. As of January, 791 patients were on assistance program waiting lists, according to Christine Lubinksi, executive director of the HIV Medicine Association. Six states have adopted drastic reductions in services, she said. “If the trends continue, a whole bunch of people are not going to be treated … and those people are going to crash into other parts of the health-care system. The patients do not go away,” said William Arnold of the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs Working Group. (Source: Reuters Health, March 2004)