FY 09 HIV/AIDS Budget Priorities:
Testimony to the Illinois House Human Services Appropriations Committee

April 29, 2008

Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to present our FY 09 budget priorities. We understand that this will be a difficult budget year, and that you will have extremely tough choices to make.

Most importantly, we urge to you maintain level funding for all public health programs. This includes HIV/AIDS prevention and care programs and sexually transmitted disease prevention and treatment programs.

Our funding priorities follow:

1) Provide $2 million to expand voluntary HIV testing in health care facilities (new IDPH line item). An estimated 40,000-42,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS in Illinois. About 10,000 of them (one in four) do not know they are infected with HIV, and are without specialized medical care for HIV disease that would help many to live longer, healthier lives.

• The funds would be used to create a Department of Public Health grants program to expand HIV testing in medical settings, such as emergency rooms, ambulatory care clinics, STD clinics, and other settings where doctors are most likely to identify individuals with undiagnosed HIV infection.

• This funding would implement new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations that everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 be routinely tested for HIV.

• The funding would also implement P.L. 95-0007, sponsored by Rep. La Shawn Ford and former Sen. Carol Ronen, which would modernize and streamline HIV testing in Illinois.

• Supported activities could include purchasing rapid HIV test kits and supporting staff to expand testing, training healthcare providers to develop systems for expanded HIV screening programs; providing technical assistance to health facilities to develop protocols to expand the offer of voluntary HIV testing; and conducting research to evaluate the effectiveness of these grants and expanded testing.

• Grantees could provide an estimated 45,000 additional HIV tests per year, and identify approximately 540-675 additional HIV-positive individuals annually.

2) Provide a $4 million increase for the Supportive Housing Program (Supportive Housing MI line item in the DHS budget).
• This new funding will give men, women, and children all over the state, who have been homeless, and/or have special needs such as HIV/AIDS or mental illness, a decent, affordable home with support services that will allow them to stay housed and take the positive next steps in their lives.

• AIDS Foundation of Chicago and partner organizations will use new supportive housing funds to help more than 150 homeless individuals or couples living with HIV/AIDS in 150 units scattered throughout the City of Chicago.

• Supportive housing has been proven to be cost effective. A federally-funded demonstration project conducted by AFC found that individuals who received supportive housing services, when compared to counterparts who received usual care:

o Used almost half the number of nursing home days,

o Were nearly two times less likely to be hospitalized or use an emergency room, and

o As a group, had annual medical expenses that were at least $900,000 less than their usual care counterparts, after subtracting the annual expense of providing the supportive housing services.

3) Identify sufficient revenue to enact comprehensive health reform

• We urge the committee to identify sources of revenue sufficient to fund comprehensive health reform in Illinois.

• We can’t afford to wait. Every year we delay another 35,000-40,000 families lose health insurance. The cost of health insurance premiums continues to rise at a rate that is faster than inflation.

• Today, 1.4 million Illinoisans are uninsured. Every insured family in the state pays over $1,000 per year for health insurance to pay for care for the uninsured.

• Our healthcare expansion priority is to cover uninsured individuals whose income is below 100% of poverty, or below about $10,200 per year for an individual. These estimated 338,000 individuals make up about a quarter of the state’s uninsured population. SB 1925, currently in House Rules, would expand coverage to this population.

Thank you for considering these requests.

Contact: John Peller 312-719-6208.

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