Washington Blade - April 6, 2001
Lou Chibbaro Jr.
Although the president is scheduled to formally release his budget on Monday, April 9, details about the budget began circulating this week on Capitol Hill and among groups that monitor various government programs, including health-related programs.
AIDS advocacy groups expressed alarm over the reports of a "flat" budget for the Ryan White program, saying it would translate into a decrease in funds and resources for hundreds of local, community-based agencies that provide medical services to people with AIDS. Representatives of the groups say the number of patients they treat has increased each year, and a lack of additional funds for 2002 could force them to reduce services.
Congress passed the Ryan White CARE Act in 1990 to provide emergency assistance to cities and states hit hardest by the AIDS epidemic. Most of the funding is used to provide medical care to people with HIV who have low incomes and who lack private health insurance. Among the programs funded by the Ryan White Act is the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), which provides life-saving medications to patients who otherwise could not afford to buy them.
Representatives of state health agencies that dispense AIDS drugs funded under the Ryan White program have said they are reaching the limits of their budgets and may be forced to place new restrictions on the number of people eligible to receive the drugs.
The New York Times and the Associated Press reported April 4 that they obtained budget documents from the Department of Health and Human Services showing that funding for the Ryan White program would remain at $1.8 billion, with no increase planned for 2002. The New York Times also reported the documents show the overall budget for HHS in 2002 comes to $55.5 billion, representing an increase of 5 percent over the previous year. According to the Times, all of the net increase goes to the National Institutes of Health, which carries out the government's biomedical research programs.
The White House in February released a preliminary budget "blueprint" which disclosed that the president planned to increase the overall NIH budget by $2.8 billion. AIDS activists praised that development, saying it would lead to more research into AIDS treatment advances and AIDS vaccine development. But they also noted that the lopsided funding for NIH would likely lead to cuts or flat funding for other HHS programs. Activists urged the president to increase his overall HHS budget as a means of avoiding the need to cut some programs. But according to the Times, the president apparently has chosen to make cuts rather than increase the HHS budget.
"One of our overall goals is to slow the rate of growth of federal spending," the Times quoted an unnamed White House official as saying.
"In the last year, the number of people living with AIDS increased by over 20,000 and the numbers will certainly grow at a comparable rate this year," said Patricia Bass, chair of the CAEAR Coalition, a national group representing city and state agencies that receive Ryan White Funds. "In the face of such rapidly escalating needs, flat funding amounts to a large-scale cut. Such a cut is unprecedented since the beginning of CARE Act funding over 10 years ago during George H.W. Bush's presidency."
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