Aids Patients’ Pleas Go Unanswered No Money For Expensive Drugs In Batt’s Budget Request

Ray Hutchison begins each day swallowing 23 pills - some for his liver, some for his lungs, some for his immune system.

He returns to the bottles of Crixivan, AZT and Epivir every eight hours, part of a $2,000-a-month habit that more than outstrips his Social Security disability check. That check barely covers his rent.

Hutchison makes little more than $478 a month - the cutoff to qualify for Medicaid - and the former self-employed house painter doesn’t have insurance. Instead, he relies on a combination of free drugs from pharmaceutical manufacturers, help from the county and help from the federal government.

But much of that support is dwindling. And without help from the state in 1998, indigent AIDS patients like Hutchison may not be able to buy the pills that keep them alive.

He and a dozen other uninsured or underinsured AIDS patients in North Idaho are worried because the state of Idaho hasn’t moved on a request to kick in money to cover the expected drop in federal funds and the cutbacks in charitable donations from drug companies.

A request from AIDS advocates didn’t show up in Gov. Phil Batt’s budget request to the Legislature. “Gov. Batt apparently decided providing this critical help was not even worthy of being considered,” said Lori Lochelt of the North Idaho AIDS Coalition.

“There are a dozen clients on the waiting list for these drugs and I’m mad.”

Batt’s office says the governor isn’t unsympathetic. It’s just that the Division of Financial Management believes it’s too soon to commit to a funding figure.

The state doesn’t know how much drug companies will come through with, explained Financial Management’s Gary Felt.

In addition, “no one knows the dollar amount of drugs being provided…we need to know what the replacement cost will be,” Felt said.

Finally, it’s not yet clear how much the federal government will kick in - that grant expires in April. So state financial analysts don’t have the data to build a defensible budget request.

But Lochelt, Hutchison and others say there are clear signs that money will be needed no matter what. Last year, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare had to come up with $100,000 just to maintain the program at minimal levels.

Idaho has indigent AIDS patients on the waiting list for several drugs, Lochelt said. And the AIDS Drug Assistance Program can help with only 10 of the medications that keep AIDS patients alive.

Some patients need 15. Even between $100,000 and $300,000 would do a tremendous amount for the program, she said.

Lochelt acknowledges that some people question the worth of providing the medications. To do so is a money-saving move, she argues.

The medications keep the AIDS patients healthy, out of the hospital, out of the doctor’s office, out of situations where they are racking up higher medical bills. “It is far less expensive to buy medication up front than treat serious, complicated, long-term illness,” Lochelt said.

She worries that if Idaho waits until the federal grant comes through in April, it will be too late because legislators will have gone home and the state will have allocated all of its money for the year.

Lochelt also worries about public support. “One thing that really makes me nervous is the perception in Idaho that these people deserve it,” she said.

Hutchison said he believes he contracted AIDS long ago, when treating the open sores of one of his employees in the days before there was awareness of the dangers of AIDS transmission.

His bad luck is typical.

“Most of my clients are heterosexual women living in rural Idaho,” Lochelt said. “I’m not talking about promiscuous women. It’s people you would look at and say, ‘That person has AIDS?”’

And in some cases, they are single mothers, left to raise children by husbands who died of the disease.

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