Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Wednesday October 14, 1998
Katherine Rizzo, Associated Press Writer
Sens. Mike DeWine and James Jeffords were pushing at the last minute for floor votes on legislation authorizing compensation to people who might have been spared the HIV infection had the government been more aggressive about screening tainted blood and blood products.
Though they both want to help, they disagree about how to do it.
DeWine, R-Ohio, was pushing a bill that would allow the government to give $100,000 each to hemophiliac HIV victims or their survivors, with a price tag of about $750 million if appropriators approve full payment. Jeffords, R-Vt., was supporting a version that would allow compensation for everyone who contracted HIV through blood transfusions, at a cost of twice as much.
DeWine said he wants to help all the victims too, but the House would not along with the Jeffords version, so there was no choice but to move the smaller bill. Jeffords' spokeswoman, Heidi Mohlman, said the senator wasn't ready to give up and was still trying to talk to crucial House members.
"It becomes a practical question of how you can get done what you need to get done," DeWine said. "It is this or nothing at this point."
Hemophiliacs started working five years ago to build support for legislation. Their well-organized lobby secured 270 House and 62 Senate co-sponsors of legislation authorizing compensation.
That bill was a wake-up call to other HIV victims who contracted the deadly virus from blood transfusions for diseases other than hemophilia. About a year ago, the transfusion patients formed their own group and started pressing to be included in Congress' deliberations.
"Jeffords is really our only hope," Steve Grissom, president of the National Association for Victims of Transfusion Acquired AIDS Inc., said from his Cary, N.C., home. "They wrote a bill for people who contracted AIDS through contaminated blood products and then they left half of us out."
DeWine said his strategy was to set a precedent with a more limited bill and return next year to expand the authorization to include people like Grissom. Grissom said he feared his group would not be able to get Congress' attention after the hemophiliacs are taken care of. Tainted transfusion victims, he added, shouldn't be penalized for failing to know how or when to lobby.
The group that's been successful at just that sort of organization said it's sympathetic to the transfusion patients' plight and supports adding them to the authorization _ next year.
"We have from the beginning said we have no issue with it being addressed. Just don't impede our progress and don't kill the bill this year," said Val Bias, legislative coordinator for the National Hemophilia Foundation. "Unfortunately, the position that Senator Jeffords has taken pits the two needing communities at each other."
DeWine said that if Jeffords holds a hard line _ blocking action on the smaller bill and insisting on the larger one _ neither would come up for a vote. Both said they hadn't stopped discussing it, although their talks bore no fruit Wednesday.
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