A proposed 35% increase will jump federal costs from a current $285 million to $385 million. But will this apparent boon get help to those who are truly in need?

The move, the White House seems to indicate, will help make life-saving drugs available to people who are living with HIV. Certain hurdles for Medicaid recipients, however, remain intact which, in fact, spell death to Americans who are not privately insured.

A scathing early December report card was issued by the President's advisors accompanied simultaneously by HRC charges of a seething "moral outrage" because of the President's neglect of Medicaid/ AIDS issues. Winnie Stachelberg's pointed comments, as political director of HRC, may have helped embarrass the President into taking some form of action.

Though he is taking some necessary first steps, Medicaid-drug-access-rules put dead-end hurdles into place: Medicaid pays a patient only when its too late to help him/ or her. The new drugs often stand in the way of disabilities and yet are not made available until after the onset of the dreaded disabilities!

The administration's own guidelines for the treatment of HIV disease, released in June, clearly indicate that early treatments with protease inhibitors are essential to a patient's success. The combination "cocktail" drugs range between $12 and $15 thousand dollars per patient annually.

Current U.S. Government rules giving patients access to protease drugs under Medicaid do not allow for those much-needed early treatments mentioned in the administration's own accounts. The federal rulings currently make patients eligible for the promising drug therapies only if they have first become incapacitated because of the virus. By that time, the new drugs often do not produce their desired effects.

HRC has called on Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala to stand by the commitments of President Clinton and Vice President Gore to make the life-saving substances available to people unable to afford them.

Ms. Stachelberg pledged that the Human Rights Campaign would continue, along with a coalition of partners, to press the Clinton administration, requesting quick action.

Responding to the Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson who'd announced that treatments for HIV+ people who are not yet AIDS-diagnosed would be "too expensive," Winnie Stachelberg replied in an effective tone: "Peoples lives are at stake! 'Too expensive' is an unacceptable excuse for not making these treatments available to people who cannot otherwise afford them."