The battle for
additional Ryan White funds between large states like New
York, Illinois, and California and Southern states with
rising numbers of HIV cases is continuing in
Washington, with several Southern senators turning to
the media in their effort to secure more federal AIDS funds,
the Winston-Salem Journal reports. The senators
told reporters this week that the current Ryan White
funding formulas favor cities with a population of more than
500,000 people and that have had at least 2,000 new
AIDS cases diagnosed among residents during the past
five years. Although HIV rates are rising in the
South, few Southern cities meet these criteria and are
losing out on federal funding, the senators told
reporters.
They are pushing
their fellow lawmakers to change the funding
formulas during discussions to reauthorize the act so that
more Southern cities will qualify for additional
funding.
But lawmakers
from New York and California as well as some AIDS advocates
say large urban areas are still home to most of the
nation's AIDS cases. They also say that the
Southern lawmakers are ignoring such issues as quality
of care and cost of living in their analysis of how Ryan
White funds are allocated. If the funding formula is
drastically changed, New York and California could
each lose out on about $20 million annually in federal
AIDS funding, which would severely hamper HIV treatment and
support programs, they say.
The
reauthorization bill is currently being studied by the U.S.
Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions. (The Advocate)