Health News
2006-05-02
Big-state
lawmakers oppose Ryan White changes
At last
week’s meeting of the House energy and commerce
subcommittee on health, lawmakers from California, New
At last
week’s meeting of the House energy and commerce
subcommittee on health, lawmakers from California, New
York, and New Jersey denounced proposed changes to
Ryan White CARE Act funding. The proposals are
intended to more equitably distribute $2 billion per year in
federal HIV funds, but in effect would shift funding
from Western and Northeastern states to the South.
Some Ryan White
funding formulas disproportionately help states with
urban areas by double-counting AIDS patients in metropolitan
and state figures, according to Government
Accountability Office investigators. A formula that
accounts for AIDS deaths vastly benefits San Francisco,
giving it an additional $7 million annually. The White House
wants to halt both practices. But the federal
Department of Health and Human Services' administrator
of health resources and services, Elizabeth Duke,
could provide few details on that proposal.
"The money needs
to follow the infection," said Rep. Charlie Norwood, a
Georgia Republican and a member of the subcommittee, which
is negotiating with the Senate health committee to
find a compromise bill reauthorizing the Ryan White
Act.
At the hearing,
several California lawmakers were prepared to rebut the
GAO findings of Ryan White funding imbalances, touting a
report released this week by the Communities
Advocating Emergency AIDS Relief. That report found
Ryan White funds more equitably distributed than the GAO
did.
"I think it's
skewed," said Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat.
"Why are we picking on the larger cities? It seems to me
that there's excellent funding for other states. The
chairman's state is right in the middle here," she
said, indicating Georgia, home state of committee
chairman Nathan Deal. "It bothers me that we are
allowing a system that counts deceased individuals," Deal
said. (AP)
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