{"id":260846,"date":"2010-02-01T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rhrealitycheck.org\/blog\/2010\/01\/29\/aids-advocates-question-obama-healthcare-and-spending-cuts"},"modified":"2010-02-01T06:58:19","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T11:58:19","slug":"aids-advocates-question-healthcare-and-spending-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/260846","title":{"rendered":"AIDS Advocates Question Healthcare and Spending Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tThis article was originally published at HousingWorks.org<\/a> and is published here with permission from the author.\n\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nMany AIDS advocates are expressing concern about President
\nBarack Obama’s commitment to combating the epidemic, on the heels of a State of
\nthe Union that downplayed the urgency of federal healthcare reform and
\nproposed freezing much government discretionary spending.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhile
\nObama pushed for the passage of healthcare reform, the ask was buried 31
\nminutes into his speech. That timing felt ominous, given that on Wednesday
\nNancy Pelosi suggested\u00a0passing healthcare reform in pieces<\/a>. There
\nhas been some talk of only\u00a0passing the popular parts of healthcare reform<\/a>,
\nsuch as regulations on the private insurance industry. But AIDS advocates say
\nthat would be horrendous news for people with AIDS and other disenfranchised
\npeople.\n<\/p>\n

\n"We’re not the popular provisions," said Robert Greenwald,
\nexecutive director of the Treatment Access Expansion Project. "There’s no
\nquestion that this comprehensive package is the best we’ve seen in 50 years. We
\nneed to remove barriers to Medicaid and Medicare. I don’t think many of those
\nthings will happen if what we just see is incremental reform."\n<\/p>\n

\nChristine Campbell, Vice President for National Advocacy and
\nOrganizing at Housing Works agreed. "The majority of this bill takes us
\nstrides above where we are. Democrats and Republicans in Congress just need to
\ndo their jobs."\n<\/p>\n

\nPeople with AIDS in the United States are poorer than the
\ngeneral population and also less likely to have adequate health care.
\nForty-five percent of people with HIV\/AIDS in the United States have incomes
\nunder $10,000 a year, and 50 percent lack regular medical coverage. The
\nsituation is even more dire for people with hepatitis C, who aren’t co-infected
\ndon’t have access to the Ryan White CARE Act safety net.\n<\/p>\n

\nCampbell and AIDS advocates are recommending the House pass the
\nSenate version of the bill, as imperfect as it is. The Senate bill doesn’t
\ninclude a public option so people who purchase healthcare must go through an
\ninsurance company. The Senate version also includes a provision to appease
\nanti-abortion supporters that would require people to purchase specific
\nabortion-only coverage separately from their regular premiums.\n<\/p>\n

\nGregg Gonsalves,
\na longtime AIDS activist who has been\u00a0critical of Obama’s policies<\/a>, said that even
\nthough he thinks there are parts of the Senate healthcare reform bill that
\n"stink", he thinks it should still be passed.\n<\/p>\n

\n"The bill is terrible compared to what it could be but it’s
\nbetter than nothing basically," Gonsalves said. "I think they should pass this
\nwith a reconciliation fix."\n<\/p>\n

\nGonsalves expressed concerned with Obama’s commitment to the
\nissue. "He said we can’t give up healthcare now. But he’s taken the backseat."\n<\/p>\n

\nThe HIV
\nHealthcare Access Group sent a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to
\nHouse leadership calling on them to pass healthcare reform that includes a
\nlargely federally funded expansion of Medicaid to low income individuals; an
\nexchange or regulated marketplace for the uninsured and the under-insured to
\npurchase health insurance; generous subsidies to make coverage affordable for
\nthose who need it; stricter regulations that govern the private market
\npreventing discrimination; an investment in reorienting our health system to
\nfocus on prevention and public health and critical measures to address primary
\ncare and public health medical workforce shortages.\n<\/p>\n

\nDiscretionary
\nspending<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\nAnother
\nproblematic part of Obama’s agenda was his call for a three-year freeze in
\nspending that wasn’t related to national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and
\nSocial Security. A freeze could impact housing, federal aid, health care and
\nother programs essential to poor people with HIV\/AIDS, and other disenfranchised
\npeople.\n<\/p>\n

\n"This is a hare-brained idea," Gonsalves said. "Obama’s throwing
\na bone at Kent Conrad on the backs of poor people."\n<\/p>\n

\nAlthough Obama mentioned global AIDS in his State of the Union
\nAddress in the context of U.S.\u2018s global commitment, he has already essentially
\nflatfunded global AIDS spending, even though Congress authorized $50 billion
\nfor PEPFAR over five years.\n<\/p>\n

\nA rally was organized by Health GAP Wednesday near the White
\nHouse calling on Obama to rethink this proposal, as well as a Campaign to End
\nAIDS-organized phone zap of the White House.\n<\/p>\n

\nAfter some listserv chatter questioning whether a protest was
\nnecessary, Housing Works President and CEO Charles King defended the
\n"preemptive strike," saying, "The truth is that the Obama administration is
\nalready not delivering on global AIDS and we have no idea whatsoever what their
\nintentions are on the domestic front. They have done a good job of collecting
\ninformation and making people feel like they have been heard. We still don’t know
\nthat they have been really listening, and we probably won’t know until the
\nbudget is out."\n<\/p>\n

\nAlthough some advocates speculated there may be some efforts to
\nshield HIV\/AIDS programs from some of the cuts, broader hits to the
\nsocial
\nservices will be devastating both to people with HIV as well.\n<\/p>\n

\n"There may be some efforts to carve out HIV from the freeze,"
\nsaid David Munar, vice president for policy and communications at AIDS
\nFoundation of Chicago. "But any cuts to health and human services programs, be
\nit Head Start or cuts to the CDC budget, will be harmful for people with HIV."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published at HousingWorks.org and is published here with permission from the author. Many AIDS advocates are expressing concern about President Barack Obama’s commitment to combating the epidemic, on the heels of a State of the Union that downplayed the urgency of federal healthcare reform and proposed freezing much government discretionary spending. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5031,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5031"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}