Obama’s Re-Election Moves HIV/AIDS Movement Forward
Tuesday’s election was an historic choice on the future direction of our nation. The stakes were particularly critical for the 1.1 million Americans living with HIV/AIDS or those at risk of infection -- and those people are disproportionately Black and low-income.
Across the nation, many across the HIV/AIDS community are waking up this morning with a sigh of relief after President Barack Obama’s re-election.
“I’m ecstatic,” says C. Virginia Fields, president and CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS. “We did not want to elect a President who wanted to eliminate the Affordable Care Act.”
Blacks Disproportionately Impacted
The statistics on HIV/AIDS in Black America are quite sobering. Blacks represent only 13 percent of the nation’s population but account for 44 percent of all new HIV infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Much of this population is uninsured or under-insured,” says Fields, the former Manhattan borough president. “Thousands more people now have health care -- including many people who are HIV positive.”
The Obama Administration developed the nation’s first National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS), which is coordinating activities among all federal agencies to fight the domestic epidemic. The NHAS has identified Black gay and bisexual men and Black women as “priorities” for funding and prevention.
President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney also offered vastly different approaches to assisting the estimated 60 million Americans who do not have health insurance.
The signature accomplishment of the Obama Administration’s domestic agenda has been the Affordable Care Act, which “expands coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans. As many as 17 million of those newly insured citizens will be on Medicaid,” reports Kaiser Health News.
The Supreme Court upheld the landmark act by a 5-4 decision last June. Romney campaigned on a platform of repealing healthcare reform. The conservative House Republican majority elected in 2010 also wants to eliminate “Obamacare” -- as do many Republican governors across the nation.
South New Epicenter of HIV/AIDS
To complicate matters: The South has become the epicenter of Black America’s HIV epidemic. More “new AIDS cases were diagnosed among Black men who have sex with men in the South than in all regions combined,” the Black AIDS Institute reported in "Back of the Line: The State of AIDS Among Black Gay Men in America.” Black women account for nearly three-quarters of all new infections among women in the South.
“Those states have more poverty, larger concentrations of Blacks and often have Republican-lead state governments,” notes Texas Woman’s University assistant professor Kimberly A. Parker, Ph.D., M.P.H. “Sex-education and HIV-prevention education are limited. Many states officially promote ‘abstinence’.”
“That’s why the stakes were so high,” adds A. Cornelius Baker, a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on HIV/AIDS and the senior policy advisor of the National Black Gay Men’s Advocacy Coalition. “If you are working poor, you probably make too much money to get health care through Medicaid or you can’t afford the antiretroviral medications. Many are forced to choose between staying healthy, staying employed or feeding their families. The ACA will help people not to make that false choice.”
A Voice at the Table
One of the key problems with the current health care system is that HIV positive people often cannot receive continuous care until they have an AIDS diagnosis. The ACA mandates insurers offer a comprehensive package of items and services known as “essential health benefits, which include opportunities for free HIV testing, early treatment and continuous care,” says Fields.
“Without access to care we can’t get them into treatment. If we can’t get them into treatment, we can’t lower the community viral load,” adds 21-year-old Lawrence Stallworth, community outreach coordinator at the AIDS Task Force of Greater Cleveland. Stallworth tested positive when he was only 17-years-old. “That’s critically important among people such as me, who are Black, gay, and HIV positive,” he adds.
“That’s why we needed to re-elect the President,” adds Stallworth. “There is no pathway to fighting HIV/AIDS without the Affordable Care Act. The President has included people like me in the White House to develop the NHAS. Would we even have a voice at the table in a Romney Administration? I don’t think so.”
Rod McCullom has written and produced for ABC News and NBC, and his reporting has appeared in EBONY, The Advocate, OUT.com, The Body and many others. Rod blogs on politics, pop culture and Black gay news at rod20.com.