Teabaggers Threaten ADAP Funding

According to a Washington Blade piece just posted by Lou Chibarro, some longtime supporters of ADAP in Congress are reluctant to approve supplemental funding this year for fear of angering the Tea Party. The AIDS Drug Assistance Program keeps tens of thousands of people alive by providing them with free or low cost HIV medications.

William Arnold, executive director of the National ADAP Working Group, said intense pressure on members of Congress to curtail spending by the so-called Tea Party movement has made it difficult to line up support for an emergency supplemental appropriation measure. Arnold and officials with other national AIDS and LGBT organizations say the program is facing a crisis never seen before, where a growing number of low income people with HIV or AIDS may be denied life-saving anti-retroviral drugs in at least 11 states this year because state ADAP affiliates have run out of money. Due to a shortage of funds, the 11 states have been forced to put in place waiting lists for patients who otherwise would have received AIDS medication prescribed by their doctors.

ADAP actually saves the government billions annually because it keeps people with HIV out of the nation's emergencies rooms. But try telling that to the Tea Party, who'd rather see people suffer a painful, lingering death that be accused of funding something like AIDS relief.