05.15.08 - San Francisco AIDS Foundation dismayed by Governor’s revised budget

The Governor continues to propose eliminating from the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) formulary several classes of drugs that manage medication side effects as well as co-morbid conditions; decreasing Medi-Cal provider reimbursements and cutting several Medi-Cal benefits critical to people living with HIV; and reducing already under-funded local programs including HIV education and prevention, counseling and testing, housing and home/community-based care. According to the Foundation, these cuts will affect primarily low-income Californians.

“This budget is being balanced not just on the backs of disadvantaged Californians, but on those who face the additional burden of living with HIV and those most at risk of contracting it,” said Mark Cloutier, Chief Executive Officer for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. "This budget reverses years of progress fighting HIV in San Francisco and all over California.”

California ranks second in the nation in cumulative AIDS cases, surpassed only by New York. 160,000 Californians currently live with HIV, and an estimated 9,000 more will become infected with HIV this year.

"When you consider that HIV treatment will cost more than $600,000 dollars over a single life time,” said Courtney Mulhern-Pearson, Legislative and Policy Associate at the AIDS Foundation, “it is short-sighted to reduce our prevention efforts just to save a few dollars now. This budget will have huge and frightening implications for future budgets.”  

The one noted change in the revisions for HIV/AIDS funding, an apparent 16.2% increase in ADAP, merely adjusts for a previously underestimated caseload of disadvantaged Californians living with HIV. The Governor still has not proposed reducing funding for antiretrovirals or drugs that treat opportunistic infections.

“AIDS already exposes the stark inequities in our healthcare systems, with HIV disproportionately affecting the poor and persons of color,” said Cloutier. “These reductions will only exacerbate an already unacceptable situation.”

During the next few months, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation will collaborate with legislators, other advocates, and the Governor’s office to craft a budget that preserves essential HIV/AIDS services, and that spreads the burden of the current state deficit equitably among all sectors of society.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation provides leadership to prevent new HIV infections. Linking community experience with science, the Foundation develops ground-breaking prevention programs and bold policy initiatives to promote health and create sustainable progress against HIV. Established in 1982, the Foundation refuses to accept that HIV transmission is inevitable.