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US should take over HIV treatment for poor, report says

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The US government should pay to treat all low-income Americans infected with the AIDS virus, at a cost of an extra $US5.6 billion over the next 10 years, a committee of experts has recommended.

The US government should pay to treat all low-income Americans infected with the AIDS virus, at a cost of an extra $US5.6 billion over the next 10 years, a committee of experts has recommended. The committee at the Institute of Medicine, which advises the US government on health issues, said the proposed low-income treatment program would pay for itself by reducing future health costs. All US citizens with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) who make less than $US22,500 a year should be eligible, the report recommended. It said the program should pay for HIV drugs that can keep patients healthy and for the supportive care that goes along with it. “The federal government should establish and fully fund a national program for treatment of individuals with HIV infection that would administered by the states,” committee chair Lauren LeRoy, president of Grantmakers In Health, a non-profit health educational organisation, told a news conference. Total public spending on HIV and AIDS is about $US7.2 billion a year in the United States, Ms LeRoy said. The new federal program would take over what states currently spend on HIV and AIDS through Medicare and Medicaid, and would end up costing only about $US500 million extra annually, she said in an interview. In the first year, she said, almost 59,000 new HIV patients would be able to get lifesaving drugs, and over 10 years their death rate would fall by 56 per cent. ‘A good buy'”We also estimate that around 3,000 new HIV infections would be averted each year,” she said. “It is considered a good buy.” The AIDS virus infects an estimated 43 million people worldwide and has killed more than 25 million since it first began spreading in the early 1980s. HIV has infected about 950,000 people in the United States and 40,000 more become infected each year. HIV infection cannot be cured, but a cocktail of drugs can keep it from progressing to AIDS – the destruction of the immune system that leaves patients vulnerable to a range of infections that eventually kill them. The US does not have a systematic plan for treating HIV. Some private insurers will pay for the drugs, the state-federal health insurance plan pays for some under Medicaid or Medicare and the US Congress has mandated some state and local treatment under the Ryan White CARE Act. “Although these programs provide anti-retroviral drug therapy and other services to thousands of needy HIV-infected people, thousands more go without necessary treatment because of eligibility requirements and limitations in covered benefits,” the institute said.The Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit health research group, describes HIV health coverage in the US as “a quilt with many holes”. It says it is difficult to navigate through the different programs that are available. “An estimated 42 per cent to 59 per cent of the almost one million people living with HIV/AIDS in the US are not in regular care,” Mr Kaiser said in its most recent report. “The fact that about 40,000 new AIDS diagnoses and 16,000 deaths occur each year further indicates that our current system is failing to ensure adequate health care for persons living with HIV infection,” the institute added. (Source: ABC Health News, Reuters Health, May 2004)


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Dates

Posted On: 16 May, 2004
Modified On: 5 December, 2013


Created by: myVMC