San Francisco Chronicle - The Voice of the West, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94119 - Friday, September 12, 1997 - Page A2
Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau

The House is expected to pass a $132 million increase -- 79 percent -- in funding early next week for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which pays for expensive new drug treatments for people who lack adequate private insurance and do not qualify for Medicaid.

The so-called ADAP program, which is administered by the states, is considered a critical lifeline for low-income people with AIDS. The new combination drug treatments using protease inhibitors appear to be highly effective at slowing the progress of HIV infection. They are also very costly, running from $10,000 to $15,000 a year for each person -- and the demand for the drugs increases as they help more people live longer.

The program got a 221 percent increase in money last year, but rising demand and high costs still led to funding shortfalls in many states.

According to a report sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, states responded to the funding shortfalls by limiting program enrollment, restricting access to certain medications and suspending coverage of the new drugs.

An estimated 80,000 people used the program last year, according to the Kaiser report, and as many as 280,000 people may be eligible.

President Clinton in his budget called for no increases for the drug program. The Senate is calling for a $50 million increase, and aides said the House total of $299 million is unlikely to receive much support unless other areas can be found to offset the increase. The two bills must be reconciled in a conference committee.

Some AIDS activists, primarily the Log Cabin Republicans, argue that the White House is not pushing hard enough for the program. Log Cabin Republican president Rich Tafel has accused Clinton of posing as a supporter of gays but doing "little or nothing to help save the lives of these thousands of people who desperately need access to these drugs."

But Tod Summers, deputy director of the administration's Office of National Aids Policy, said the White House has stated its support for the House measure through a statement by the Office of Management and Budget.

`The typical mechanism for expressing the administration position is a statement of administration policy, and that statement, recently released, clearly indicates the administration's pleasure with the House number," Summers said.

An aide to Representative John Porter, the Illinois Republican who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee on health and labor, said the White House was "not active" in supporting the AIDS drug program and did not list it as a priority for funding increases during budget negotiations last summer.

Daniel Zingale, executive director of the AIDS Action Council in Washington, called the administration's budget request "a mistake."

"Fortunatley, Mr. Porter and others in the House have moved forward with increases," Zingale said. "The administration now supports those increases and that's important to acknowledge."
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