Bush Seeks More Control Over AIDS Act

[UpInArms]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A622-2004Jun23.html

PHILADELPHIA, June 23 -- President Bush proposed Wednesday that the executive branch assume significant control over the program that has been the backbone of federal assistance for Americans infected with AIDS.

Bush said that the $2 billion Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, which since 1990 has been the government's largest subsidy of medical and other services specifically for HIV-positive people in the United States, "takes too little account of the most urgent needs." He said the administration should have greater power to decide where the money is distributed and how it is spent, focusing more on paying for medicine and doctors' visits than on social services.

Bush made his proposals at a black church here during a speech that interwove themes of AIDS and religion. The president speaks often about a law the administration pushed through Congress last year to combat the epidemic in Africa and the Caribbean, but Wednesday's remarks focused in unusual detail on his philosophy for coping with it domestically. "We will continue to confront the disease abroad, and we will confront it here at home as well," he said. "These efforts are not mutually exclusive."

AIDS activists have complained that Bush has largely sought to freeze spending on the Ryan White act, and the president on Wednesday did not pledge any expansion of the program. Instead, he and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, who accompanied him, said the solution is to ask Congress, which must renew the program next year, to give HHS far more discretion to target the way the subsidies are used. The money is currently allotted according to a complex government formula.

Bush and Thompson also said they want to establish stronger methods of finding out whether organizations are making good use of their subsidies and to expand the number of religious groups funded to help people with AIDS.

...more...

[Justice]

1. Yesterday's Headlines Were He Was Putting In $20M More Into

fighting AIDS, but the article reveals it is not new money -- he is just talking money from somewhere else.

[underpants]

3. Don't you see they want to simplify a COMPLEX formula

AIDS activists have complained that Bush has largely sought to freeze spending on the Ryan White act, and the president on Wednesday did not pledge any expansion of the program. Instead, he and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, who accompanied him, said the solution is to ask Congress, which must renew the program next year, to give HHS far more discretion to target the way the subsidies are used. The money is currently allotted according to a complex government formula.

Of course it is great that more money (if only from somewhere else) is going to be available but this "complex government formula" simplification smells of money being redirected to the pharmaceutical companies with LESS accountability than before. Given their track record that is the first thing that came to mind.

[Solly Mack]

2. Can you say abstinence programs? I know Bush can...

[gWbush is Mabus]

4. all the AIDS money will be going to churches