The Health 202: HIV prevention is the part of Trump's budget Congress might pass

[DonViejo]

By Paige Winfield Cunningham
March 12 at 7:53 AM

THE PROGNOSIS

As usual, there is plenty Democrats hate in President Trump’s budget request, but this year the proposal contains something that might bring them to the table: a large infusion of funding to end HIV transmissions in the United States.

Trump — who last month pledged to end the HIV epidemic in this country by 2030 — asked Congress for $291 million in mostly new funding for the ambitious project in the budget request the White House released yesterday. The funding, about half of it flowing through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would be targeted toward 48 counties and the rural areas of seven (mostly southern) states where more than 50 percent of new HIV cases are diagnosed.

“In many of these places, it is hard for people at risk of contracting HIV to find the medication critical to protecting them from the virus and ending the 38-year-old epidemic,” my Washington Post colleague Lena H. Sun writes. “The CDC estimates that the decline in HIV infections has stalled because effective prevention and treatment are not reaching those who could most benefit.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar heads to Capitol Hill over the next three days for a trio of hearings on the budget request. There, he’ll probably ask lawmakers to grant the additional dollars even as he faces probing questions from Democrats on a host of other issues, including HHS’s efforts to lower prescription drug costs and its role in migrant family separations.

Today, Azar will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and on Thursday he’ll visit the Senate Finance Committee. Tomorrow, he’ll sit before the House Appropriations Health subcommittee, where Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) holds the key to the HIV funding Trump wants.

While the Democratic-led House won’t pass the vast majority of the items requested by the president, the HIV project is an area of bipartisan concern and one that DeLauro may act upon when it comes time to appropriate money to keep the government running. DeLauro said that while she’s “encouraged” by the HIV initiative, she’s also concerned the administration’s proposed cuts to other health programs, including Medicaid, would counteract the effort.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2019/03/12/the-health-202-hiv-prevention-is-the-part-of-trump-s-budget-congress-might-pass/5c8694401b326b2d177d604c/?utm_term=.fa64480c3fad

[Turbineguy]

1. On the face of it, a good thing.

But it's a Trump Admin operation. There's gotta be a grift in there somewhere.

[Afromania]

2. It'll come back out of the budget once the news that they've cured somebody else dies down a bit.

I'm certain that's the only reason it's in there is because it is very recent news. He actually cut at the funding for HIV research in the last budget. In a reasonable man you'd think there was an epiphany. With trump you know that isn't it. He's incapable of the sort of thinking that produced one. He's a semi literate, petty, ignorant hate filled buffoon.