President Bush on
Tuesday signed a bill shifting federal AIDS money to
rural areas and the South. The House on December 9 agreed by
voice vote to renew the $2.1 billion annual Ryan White
Act. The Senate passed the bill earlier after senators
from New York and New Jersey dropped their opposition,
accepting a compromise that settled months of dispute just
as Congress adjourned for the year.
Lawmakers from some urban areas feared losing
money under a five-year renewal of the law. The final
deal renews it for three years. That allows earlier
reviews of the formulas for distributing money and
eliminates the large dollar cuts in the final years
that threatened some areas.
AIDS began as a big-city epidemic affecting
mainly gay white men. The updates, the first since
2000, aim to spread money more equally around the country.
The current law had counted only patients with
AIDS diagnoses. The revision now counts patients with
HIV who have not developed AIDS. That change favors
the South and rural areas, for example, where the disease
is a newer phenomenon. (Deb Riechmann, AP)
