Try our new search engine

Advisory Panel Faults Clinton AIDS Leadership

Cites Failure To Expand Medicaid, End Ban On Needle Exchange

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Dec. 7) - A White House advisory panel says the federal battle against AIDS has been stalled in the absence of aggressive leadership by President Bill Clinton's administration.

In its second "progress report," the 32-member panel on Sunday faulted the administration, like its predecessors, for failing "to lay out a coherent plan of action" to prevent transmission of the AIDS virus, HIV.

Sandra Thurman, director of the White House office of National AIDS policy, said she shared the advisory panel's "sense of urgency and frustration" but rejected the notion that progress had been held up.

The report said that "funding for HIV prevention remains inadequate, particularly when compared with the monumental American bill for medical expenses."

In addition, "far too many Americans lack access to effective medications," it added.

"Although powerful evidence of the effectiveness of HIV prevention demands a robust and energetic response, the administration has failed to provide such bold leadership," the report said.

Overall, it pointed out Clinton had "dramatically" improved the national response to AIDS since he took office in 1993.

Funding for AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health had grown 50 percent since the start of the administration and funds were being spent "more efficiently and strategically," it said.

"However, most of these important strides occurred during the president's first term," which ended in January, it added.

"Despite substantial and diligent efforts ... progress in the federal response to AIDS has stalled in recent months, contributing to a sense of diminished priority for AIDS issues during the president's second term," the report said.

Specifically, it criticized the administration's failure to find ways to expand Medicaid, the combined federal and state health program for the poor, to cover all low-income people with HIV early in the course of the disease.

It called on the administration to push for the removal of a congressionally mandated ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs.

"Perhaps most disturbing is the continued prohibition on federal funding for needle exchange programs despite clear scientific evidence of the efficacy of such programs in preventing new HIV infections without increasing substance use," the panel wrote.

Dr. Scott Hitt, advisory council chairman, said: "We know that needle exchange saves lives and does not increase drug use and if we know those two things and half the people getting infected are getting it with dirty needles, (it's) time to address things if we want to end the epidemic."

Thurman said Clinton worked "vigorously" to save Medicaid, but she said that expanding Medicaid benefits to cover expensive therapies has proved "more difficult than anticipated."

"There is no absence of will to meet this challenge. There is, however, a different sense of what can be accomplished in an often polarized political environment in which ideology can overwhelm science," she said.

"The struggle to get the best quality of care and the best medications to all HIV-positive Americans is a very difficult fight and one I know the president is committed to winning," Thurman added.

The Human Rights Campaign, the largest national lesbian and gay political organization, endorsed the panel's conclusions.

"We ask the president to heed his own advisory council, which has called on him to be bold and express leadership," said Elizabeth Birch of the Human Rights Campaign.

One council member, Terrje Anderson, said: "We are all committed to doing whatever it takes to accomplish what we need to accomplish. And I am very open to resigning if that is going to be an effective for doing it."

"This epidemic is gigantic. It's racing ahead of us. No matter how much we do or how hard we try, it's never going to be enough," said Thurman.

CNN correspondent Kyoko Altman contributed to this report.