Republicans in the US are planning on raising the price of PrEP
The Trump administration is moving to prevent access to PrEP in over 30 states in America, with the help of other republicans.
As the newly instated administration is moving to abolish the Affordable Care Act and implement Trumpcare, access to PrEP is threatened by change in pricing and insurance coverage.
Currently, the HIV prevention drug currently costs $1,500 without insurance but most users can get it for anything up to $500 thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
However, the move to eliminate the Medicaid expansion means that new applicants to PrEP will likely be blocked, and low-income earners will also be affected.
If the new bill is passed then a fixed-sum per person would replace Medicaid, and the ACA’s cost-sharing assistance would be repealed. This helps reduce the burden of health cost, but if repealed would mean a rise in cost of coverage.
Between 2012 and 2015, 80,000 American’s started on the prevention medication.
“When PrEP was first approved, gay and bisexual men were not using it,” Noël Gordon Jr., a senior program specialist for HIV prevention & health equity at the Human Rights Campaign said. “Now, we’ve seen an exponential increase in users.”
Gordon deemed the potential ACA repeal “devastating” as “it has the potential to turn the tide the other direction, where we could potentially see the spread of HIV.”
Trans healthcare is also coming under fire because of the changes.
The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, has made a half-hearted attempt to seemingly protect the Affordable Care Act.
However, Price’s previous remarks indicate that the 1.5 million trans people living in the US may loose Medicaid and the ACA – two key components to protecting transgender medical care.
It is estimated that PrEP is 92 percent effective at preventing HIV infections.
