HIV

Medicaid is also the program that provides the largest portion of federal money spent on health care for people living with HIV. Typically, poor people who are HIV positive must progress to AIDS (T-cell count of 200 or under) before they can qualify under the "disabled" category. More than half of people living with AIDS are estimated to receive Medicaid payments. Two other programs that provide financial assistance to people living with HIV/AIDS are the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and the Supplemental Security Income. However, Medicaid eligibility policy contrasts with the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) guidelines which recommend therapy for all patients at 350 or certain patients higher, and according to a new recent large scale study, asymptomatic HIV positive patients who started on medication with T-cell counts 350 to 500 had a 70 percent higher survival rate than those who waited. This study's results show that waiting even until the cell count reaches 350 (current JAMA recommendation) increases the risk of death.^[13] As many patients cannot afford expensive medicines without Medicaid help, HIV annual death counts have failed to decline significantly since 2002.