Most of the people who do not get into ADAP programs find other sources of help, including programs offering drugs donated by pharmaceutical companies. The programs, however, are dependent on what donations they receive and often require patients to reapply frequently for help.
Florida, one of the states hit hardest by the recession, has 3,938 people on the ADAP waiting list, the highest number in the country. In February, the state ran out of ADAP money and turned to Welvista, a South Carolina-based nonprofit pharmaceutical assistance program that is providing medication to HIV patients on ADAP waiting lists in several states. For six weeks, Welvista supplied medicine to more than half of those in Florida’s ADAP program until new federal funding became available in April.
Thomas Decker, 58, an HIV patient in Arlington, was laid off from his job with a local printer in September 2009. He continued to buy his insurance through the
COBRA program, but when that ran out, he turned to ADAP.
“It’s such a shock when you have insurance and you pay into everything for so many years and then you are just sort of left out into the open — people really don’t get it,” Decker said. He was forced out of the state’s ADAP in January when his T-cell count increased, suggesting his health was improving. “I was kicked off the program basically because of my health. I always kept my health up,” he said.
Decker moved to Virginia’s waiting list, along with 684 other individuals. He is also enrolled in a pharmaceutical assistance program that provides medication.
NASTAD’s Penner points to Virginia as an example of how states can deal effectively with the ADAP overflow. While the state temporarily instituted the T-cell criteria to bump healthier individuals off the program so it could allocate ADAP funding to those in most need, “they basically hold the patients’ hand through the process,” he said.
Diana Jordan from Virginia’s Department of Health said that in four months the three-person ADAP staff “transitioned” 203 HIV patients off ADAP and worked individually with each person to find another source of funding for drug treatment. The bumping process has been discontinued, Jordan said, because federal funding grants began again in April.
“We are sorry we had to do it,” she said, “but . . . we are glad that they have something.”
This story is produced through a collaboration between The Post and Kaiser Health News. KHN, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health-care policy organization that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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