Hiv Positive | Governor Proposes Increase In Spending On Aids
In his May 15 revision to the proposed 2010-2011state budget, Governor Schwarzenegger proposes increasing overall spending on HIV/AIDS by $72,000 over the current fiscal year. That’s not much considering that he chopped $85 million out of the AIDS budget for this year.
The Governor proposed overall spending for HIV/AIDS of $1.2 billion in 20010-2011. That money would come from three sources:
The state’s General Fund – $507.6 million
Federal funds – $565.8 million
Special funds – $211.5 million
The special funds are mostly from drug rebates paid back to the state for medicine purchases made by the state in the AIDS drug assistance program.
The Governor actually proposes spending about $122 million more in General fund money in 2010-2011 than in the current fiscal year. However, he predicts federal AIDS funding to the state will be down about $21 million and receipts to the Special Fund available for HIV AIDS will be down about $28 million.
Sadly, the Governor proposes spending nothing on education and prevention, HIV counseling and testing, early intervention, (such as starting medications as soon as HIV is detected) therapeutic monitoring, or home and community based care. He proposes giving most of the AIDS funds to Medi-Cal for the treatment of people on Medi-Cal, once they become infected, and to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) to help HIV positive people pay for their medications. The need for both of these programs can be expected to grow considerably because of the lack of funding for education and prevention.
And, as regards the ADAP program, the Governor’s May revision of the proposed budget proposes spending roughly $433.6 million which is $28.6 million less than he had proposed in January of this year.
The Governor also wants to eliminate ADAP support for county jails. The counties will just have to find the money to pay for AIDS medications some where else.
You may see a spread sheet of the Governor’s May revise AIDS spending proposal by clicking here.
Boyce Hinman
