| COST OF HIV/AIDS | |
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When HIV/AIDS first appeared in the seventies and eighties, the
states with gay lobbies surrendered public health policy to the gays and
allowed the HIV epidemic to grow. Whereas public health doctors could easily
have stopped the epidemic in its tracks, states like New York with large gay
populations and political lobbies took HIV and AIDS off their official lists
of infectious diseases. New York, despite a recent 47% increase in HIV in
New York City, still does not list HIV or AIDS on its infectious disease
list. What is the result?
A RAND/Agency for Health
Care Policy and Research paper RB-4523 (1999) found that in January and
February of 1996, only 230,000 out of about 900,000 HIV infected people in
the United States received any treatment for the disease. The average income
of those with HIV is less than $10,000 per annum, whereas the treatment
costs $20,000 per annum. Of those with HIV, 59% had AIDS.
Total AIDS expenditures were 6.7 billion dollars in 1996. This was
when the new and very expensive medicines were just beginning to be used.
Today the figure is must higher. Half of those with HIV are
government-insured through Medicaid and Medicare. The paper said that we do
not know how many people have HIV; this is a direct result of the refusal of
the government to label HIV an infectious disease. In a country where
hundreds of thousands of people have HIV and either don't know it or don't
want to know it, and the government allows them to run free and infect
people, we will incur huge expenses. How much can we drain our finances to
support the unrealistic demands of the Gay Lobby? The Center of Disease
Control quotes a report that we spend now 13 billion dollars on AIDS, of
which at least one billion is wasted, and probably much more. The government
gives the Gay Lobby money to educate people to wear condoms and to get
tested for HIV, and it often takes the money and teaches people in public
seminars the tricks of titillating homosexual sex.
In keeping with the pattern of providing unrealistic solutions for
HIV that create even larger problems, the new medications for HIV that keep
people from dying are causing other diseases. According to the Center of
Disease Control Prevention News Update 2/15/02, new HIV medications produce
strokes, diabetes and heart attacks. The
CDC published an editorial from a gay writer who demanded that
"we" gays get angry at those who spread the disease wantonly,
willingly and through just plain negligence.
Anger is not the solution. We must take back public health policy
from a lobby that will crush us all financially, and kill gays and many
other people if it is not stopped.
The early costs of medicating someone with HIV were about 12k just
for the medicine, and about 20k for everything together. If we assume that
there are roughly one million people with HIV, and the figure is rising
steadily each year, we have one million times 20 thousand dollars, which is
20 billion dollars. This is just the cost of medication. We would need more
money for research, education, etc. Thus, the total budget would come close
to double the 13 billion dollar total for AIDS in 1996. When will it stop?
It would be so easy. Just put HIV and AIDS on the infectious diseases list.
What are we waiting for?
Each year there are forty million new HIV/AIDS cases. Each of these
people need, per year, 20,000 dollars for medical care. This comes to
800,000,000 dollars, almost a billion dollars. This is only the growth per
one year. The next year there will be another 800 million dollars, in
addition to the first year. In ten years, there will be almost nine billion
dollars, just from the new patients, the extra number of sick people each
year. Of course, we will have to pay for the ones who were sick previously.
Each ten years, if there are a million sick people, we will need one million
times twenty thousand dollars or 20 billion dollars times ten or 200 billion
dollars. This does not count the enormous waste and expenditure sick people
cause the government in creating a new welfare population. This, however, is
not the whole story.
As new medications arrive, they often go up in cost, making things
worse. The most recent figures for the medical care of HIV per annum is not
20k but 30k. The cost also does not reflect the fact mentioned in the CDC
update that we are seeing, with the diseases caused by the new medications
for HIV, such as heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes, just the tip of the
iceberg, because the new medicine stress the body terribly. The ultimate
cost for HIV may so drag down the economy with a never-ending process that
it will not be able to provide many basic needs for our society. We have
very little time to add two little words to the infectious diseases lists.
They are "Gay Lobby." |
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D. Eidensohn's poem
"The Wall" won an International Poetry Contest. His poems appear in
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