Lowry Will Allow New Patients Into Aids Program Governor Hopes Next Legislature Will Cover Added Medical Costs

Gov. Mike Lowry said Friday he will fully reopen a program credited with saving the lives of poor AIDS patients, and rely on next year’s Legislature to cover the estimated $1.5 million cost.

The program already is facing a deficit of about $3.5 million, a shortfall that lawmakers also must deal with next year, Lowry said.

He told a joint panel of House and Senate health-care-committee members that he could not, in good conscience, fail to provide a full prescription regimen to all who need it, given the remarkable response of patients.

At issue are drug combinations including expensive “protease inhibitors.”

A state Health Department program providing these treatments to poor AIDS patients was closed to new enrollees last month due to rapid increases in enrollment and costs.

The legislative panel, led by Sen. Kevin Quigley, D-Lake Stevens, was told by other officials that the treatments are causing a dramatic decline in AIDS symptoms among recipients.

Lowry said he would fully reopen the program in a week or so - after conferring with lawmakers, pharmaceutical companies, insurance carriers and others to see if there are ways to reduce the costs.

“As a backstop, we would look to the Legislature early next year to pass a supplemental that would cover whatever the cost might be,” he said.

Lowry, who is not seeking re-election in November, will be out of office by then.

On Tuesday, he partially reopened enrollment in the program, but only for 54 drugs that help fight infections and other AIDS symptoms. Those drugs cost about $110 a month per patient.

On Friday, he said he would reopen enrollment for new patients to use nine more powerful drugs that, when combined in various ways, appear to stop the disease in its tracks.

The list of drugs includes AZT, one of the original AIDS-fighting drugs, and the protease inhibitors, which cost about $1,200 a month per patient.

Lowry’s staff estimated it would cost about $1.5 million to fully fund treatments with protease inhibitor treatments and other expensive new drugs. The program had already projected a deficit of $3.5 million.

“We’re talking about a total of $5 million here, and that’s an estimate,” Lowry said in an interview after the hearing.

“The Department of Health would spend that money out of its general budget” of $44 million and hope the 1997 Legislature covers the cost with a supplemental appropriation early next year, he said.

Lowry said his financial advisers believe the state will underspend its $17.6 billion biennial budget by about $35 million this fiscal year, which ends June 30, 1997.

“So there will be money to cover this deficit,” he said.

The Health Department cut off enrollment in the program last month, saying the high cost of new medications and a huge enrollment increase would drain its $1 million budget before the end of the year.

Enrollment jumped from 475 in January to 840 last month, while program costs climbed from an average of $53,000 per month to $143,800, the agency said.