Florida restores funding for 16,000 people's HIV medication — for now

The Florida Department of Health is reversing its funding cuts to a program that provides HIV medication for low-income individuals, but only until they can do it legally.

The department published a notice Tuesday backtracking its decision to gut the AIDS Drug Assistance Program after supposedly failing to find $120 million in the state budget to cover it. Instead, the state will attempt to go through the formal rule-making process in order to make the cuts after a lawsuit from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation accused officials of violating the law.

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"The Department’s action makes clear that legal processes have not been followed. Floridians will now have a say in what happens to this program and its effect on them," Esteban Wood, AHF Director of Advocacy & Legislative Affairs, said in a statement. "It will also provide needed transparency, as the Department has not shown why it needs to make these harmful changes, and show how it now has a claimed $120 million deficit. This program should be fully funded to continue the care needed by thousands across Florida."

The ADAP helps provide medication to those making up to 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level ($62,600 or less). Under the proposed cuts, it would only cover those making up to 130 percent of the poverty level ($20,345), impacting over half of the more than 30,000 enrolled in the program.

While the state claims it can't find the money for the program, a December investigation from the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times found that the Ron DeSantis administration diverted more than $35 million in taxpayer funds to defeat two constitutional amendments on the ballot in 2024. The amendments, which would have legalized recreational marijuana and overturned the state's six-week abortion ban, each fell short of the 60 percent supermajority required to pass, receiving 56 percent and 57 percent, respectively.

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Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried previously told The Advocate that it is "absolutely unconscionable to think that a state of Florida or any government in the United States at this moment, with this amount of research and the advances that we have, either was intentionally or as a consequence of intentional actions, giving tens of thousands of individuals potentially a death sentence."

"We have the damn money. The damn money is in the state of Florida," Fried said. "They were able to spend $500 million building Alligator Alcatraz with no big contracts. We are still in a state of emergency for now almost two and a half years. They have the money. They can put the money in the coffers. They're choosing not to."