“It’s disappointing we’re facing flat funding when we have these programs, strategies and desires to end HIV, but we’re not going to do it,” Carl Schmid, gay man who is the executive director of the HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., told the Bay Area Reporter. “The president has proposed more money than the Congress has been allocating, but now even the president isn’t proposing the money that we need.”
An effort by House Republicans to slash more than $700 million in domestic HIV funding was rejected, according to Carl Schmid, the executive director of the HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute. “While flat funding does not expand our efforts to prevent and treat HIV or get us closer to ending HIV, it is much better than the alternative we have been facing, which was cutting vital HIV services and jeopardizing people’s lives,” Schmid said in a written statement.
“While flat funding does not expand our efforts to prevent and treat HIV or get us closer to ending HIV, it is much better than the alternative we have been facing, which was cutting vital HIV services and jeopardizing people’s lives,” said Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute.
According to Carl Schmid, Executive Director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, “Most alternative funding programs are taking advantage of a loophole in the #ACA that allows employer plans to designate certain drugs as ‘non-essential health benefit.’ The federal government through regulation seems to be starting to close that loophole for marketplace and small group plans, but for the larger employer plans, that really are the guilty parties, we need to continue to push the administration to act. Bills are also pending in several states and in the Congress. This is just a start, but to end AFPs, the government must step in stop these nefarious schemes.”
“After House Republicans initially put at risk the nation’s progress in ending HIV, we are relieved that House and Senate congressional negotiators have agreed to maintain funding for domestic HIV prevention, care, and treatment programs,” Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, said in a news release Thursday (March 21).