Every year, on June 5th, we honor HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day (HLTSAD). Held on the anniversary of the first official scientific report of AIDS cases by the CDC in 1981, HLTSAD is a day to remind us all of those we’ve lost and those we continue fighting for.
HIV long-term survivors, defined as individuals who acquired HIV before 1996 and the introduction of HAART, make up about 25% of all people living with HIV and AIDS. That makes about 300,000 long-term survivors. It also includes Dandelions, who are people that acquired HIV at birth or as young children.
Today, long-term survivors aging with HIV are facing a brand new set of challenges: comorbidities, financial insecurity, housing instability, and the possibility of losing their access to healthcare due to recently proposed cuts to Medicaid.
In a recent article for the American Society on Aging’s publication Generations Today, The Reunion Project executive director and long-term survivor Jeff Berry noted that, “Social safety net programs that many have relied on for decades are being reduced or restricted, and funding priorities are shifting away from older populations. These are not abstract changes. They directly impact how survivors live, work, and care for themselves.”
Medicaid is the single biggest source of funding for long-term care for elderly people, and with a growing number of adults living with HIV aging, or already over the age of 50, cuts to Medicaid would impact the health of these long-term survivors. At present, more than 40% of adults living with HIV rely on Medicaid and with projections showing that 70% of people living with HIV will be over the age of 50 by 2030, Congress must find a way to save Medicaid funding for the health and wellness of all people living with HIV, including long-term survivors.
States and the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program are not suited to handle the influx of people needing care should the cuts to Medicaid go through. If the cuts move forward in the Senate, vulnerable populations like HIV long-term survivors would face difficulty finding new affordable healthcare coverage that meets their growing healthcare needs.
As the HIV community rallies to prevent the Senate from passing the House’s devastating bill that would decimate our public health infrastructure – through cuts to Medicaid, the ACA, SNAP, and even Medicare – we take this awareness day as a call to action for one of the many communities that would be impacted. HIV long-term survivors have lived through one healthcare crisis already, we must do everything in our power to make sure another doesn’t occur.
