The California HIV/AIDS Advocacy Network Grassroots Evolution (CHAANGE) called a press conference at The Center this past week to express concern over Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed enrollment cap for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP).

The proposed caps were based on a statewide audit directed by Schwarzenegger to pinpoint potential savings and help resolve the current budget deficit. Auditors discovered a $37 million, or 35 percent, increase between the 1998-99 budget and the budget instituted by Gov. Gray Davis last year.

“The increased costs in ADAP are largely attributable to case load growth, increased AIDS drug costs, and expensive new drug therapies,” auditors said.

A.J. Turner, statewide co-coordinator for CHAANGE, said, “What that means is more people are coming onto the program, more people were getting infected with HIV, more people were going into the advanced stages of HIV, and that includes a diagnosis of AIDS.”

Turner said that pharmaceutical companies have begun to charge more for their drugs, often pricing them out of the market for the average consumer. “The idea behind the cap is to prevent unsustainable spending and preserve the existing level of service for the program,” Turner said. “When the enrollment hits the proposed caps, clients will be added on a first-applied, first-served basis.”

Schwarzenegger’s complete enrollment-cap proposal for health and social service programs offers a general-fund savings of $1.2 million for 2003-04, and $60.5 million for 2004-05. CHAANGE is concerned about increases to emergency care costs as a result of these enrollment caps. As for the ADAP cap providing savings, Turner asserts that AIDS drugs reduce overall healthcare costs and mortality rates – the proposed enrollment caps will not help reduce the state’s deficit, and will only exasperate emergency care costs.

“How much money is the government going to save if an individual, who cannot get a 100-dollar per month drug through the ADAP program, ends up in the hospital for six days?” Turner said. “It happened to me. I was in the hospital for six days at a cost of $12,000 and my drug only cost about $60 a month, and that’s how ADAP saved my life.”

According to Turner, on average 300 people per month will drop out of the ADAP program for a variety of reasons, such as obtaining better insurance, eventually being able to afford purchasing their own drugs or enrolling in other programs. Meanwhile, it’s estimated that approximately 420 people per month will be waiting to enroll in the program. If the enrollment cap goes into effect, 120 will be forced to wait each month to get on the program.

“That may not affect an individual who has low viral load counts or high CD4 counts,” Turner said. “But for someone who did not have access to HIV testing, who does not have access to HIV counseling or care, who all of a sudden gets sick with pneumonia, the flu or a bacterial infection, walks into a clinic, finds out they are positive, finds out their CD4 levels are extremely low, or finds out that their viral load is out of control, they go on a waiting list and they may not get the drugs to survive.”

Schwarzenegger is expected to reveal a revised budget proposal next month. Meanwhile, CHAANGE is urging the community to write the Governor asking that he remove the caps from the proposed budget. If those changes are not made, the State Assembly has the power to enact legislation to preview enrollment caps and can reject the Governor’s budget proposal.