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HIV/AIDS patients join protest outside Bredesen's office

Associated Press

Published: Wednesday, 07/06/05

On the 16th day of a sit-in protest outside Gov. Phil Bredesen's office against cuts to TennCare, people infected with HIV or suffering from AIDS joined the demonstration yesterday, expressing fears they will lose lifesaving medicines.

Timothy Vance, 47, said he takes 18 medications each month costing a total of more than $1,500 to treat AIDS. Vance, of Dowelltown, said he is losing TennCare because he also is covered by Medicare, which would not pay for his prescription drugs.

"If I get sick and put in the hospital, then it's going to cost the state a lot more than my medicines," Vance said.

Vance was one of eight people diagnosed with HIV or AIDS who joined a sit-in by TennCare recipients and their supporters outside Bredesen's office that began June 20. The new protesters joined a half-dozen others from earlier sit-ins.

Sandy Katz of the Middle Tennessee Rural AIDS initiative said more than half the patients at a Nashville clinic serving HIV/AIDS patients receive TennCare coverage.

"It's like a double whammy," Katz said of HIV/AIDS patients losing prescription coverage. "You find a treatment that works, but many people will be worse off after stopping treatment than if they had never been on it."

TennCare spokeswoman Marilyn Elam said unlimited prescription benefits are a major reason for the program's increasing costs.

In a compromise reached in April with representatives of some TennCare enrollees, coverage would be preserved for about 100,000 of the sickest adults scheduled to lose their coverage. Planned prescription reforms would exempt medicines and testing supplies used in the treatment of chronic conditions such as HIV/AIDS and diabetes, Elam said.

The compromise hinges upon the state winning concessions on what coverage it must provide that are being debated now in a federal court case.

The governor has said the state needs to cut between 226,000 and 323,000 TennCare enrollees and reduce benefits to control rising costs of the $8 billion expanded Medicaid program.