Lowry Commits $5 Million To Aids Program Money Will Allow New Patients; Hopes Legislature Steps In Next Year

Gov. Mike Lowry said Wednesday he will commit $5 million he doesn’t have so a state AIDS treatment program can take on new patients, and hope lawmakers erase the debt next year.

House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, criticized the move as “beyond the governor’s constitutional authority.”

But Lowry said he was within the law.

The state Health Department will absorb the cost in its budget and then ask the 1997 Legislature to make up the $5 million through a supplemental appropriation in January, he said.

Lowry, who will be out of office by then, said he was only “somewhat nervous” that lawmakers would refuse the request. The program, for poor AIDS patients, stopped taking new patients in mid-July due to skyrocketing enrollment and costs. At issue are new drug combinations that include expensive “protease inhibitors,” which appear to stop AIDS in its tracks.

In late July, Lowry partially reopened enrollment, but only for 54 drugs that help fight infections and other AIDS symptoms. Those drugs cost about $110 a month per patient.

Wednesday’s announcement immediately reopens enrollment for new patients who need the more powerful and expensive drugs.

Democratic Senate leaders have signaled their support of Lowry’s move, but the Republican House had a different reaction.

“The scourge of AIDS is a terrible tragedy and we must show compassion for those suffering from this terrible disease,” Ballard said.

“But the governor is exceeding his constitutional authority by spending unappropriated funds on a program that should be reviewed to ensure that it is being managed effectively,” the House leader said in a news release.

Lowry said his financial advisers believe the state will underspend in other programs by a total of about $40 million, “so the money is there to pay off” the $5 million.

He also said he plans to meet in early September with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala in an effort to get more federal financing for future AIDS treatments.

“We simply do not believe that the state alone” should carry the financial burden, he said.

Lowry said he is fairly confident the program’s deficit between now and the end of the fiscal year next June 30 will not exceed $5 million.

However, he added, “clearly these have to be viewed as estimates …”

The program was closed to new enrollees July 17 after officials said they were out of money. Enrollment jumped from 475 in January to 840 in July, while program costs climbed from an average of $53,000 per month to $143,800, the Health Department said.

Lowry told a joint panel of House and Senate health-care-committee members on Aug. 2 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.