FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the nation’s largest non-profit HIV/AIDS healthcare provider and largest global AIDS organization, today blasted Florida Medicaid officials for their failure to renew an HIV care contract with AHF’s Positive Healthcare — a respected non-profit which has been providing critical health insurance coverage for people living with HIV in Florida since 1999. AHF says the state’s move will recklessly disrupt care for a vulnerable population of nearly 2,000 Florida HIV patients.
In response to the Florida officials’ decision, advocates from AHF and Posotove Healthcare are mounting a comprehensive advocacy and media campaign to educate the public—including all Floridians living with HIV—as well as other Florida state officials and bureaucrats to persuade officials to reconsider their cancellation of the contract.
The media campaign kicked off in earnest earlier today with a statewide newspaper ad campaign consisiting of a full-page, full-color ad which ran in five major daily newspapers in Florida today, Sunday, April 8th.
The ad, with the headline, “Why Are Florida Medicaid Officials Disrupting Healthcare Coverage for People Living with HIV?”, ran today in the ‘Miami Herald,’ the ‘Sun-Sentinel’ in Ft. Lauderdale, the ‘Tallahassee Democrat,’ the ‘Tampa Bay Times’ and the ‘Florida Times-Union,’ in Jacksonville.
AHF’s Sunday newspaper advocacy ads included several alarming statistics about HIV in Florida including the following facts:
- Nearly 5,000 people in Florida were infected with HIV in 2016 alone, which means one out of every eight new HIV infections in the United States occurred in Florida.
- South Florida leads the nation in new HIV diagnoses at 38.7 new infections per every 100,000 people. In contrast, the overall rate in the United States is 12.3 new infections per every 100,000 people.
- Nearly 136,000 Floridians are estimated to be living with HIV, but one in six is still not aware of his or her HIV-positive status.
- More than 30,000 Floridians currently living with HIV are not receiving care for their infection.
The ad also urged readers to go to the website: HIVcare.org/Florida to learn more and how they can support those living with HIV.
“Many Florida Medicaid patients living with HIV have been seeing their doctor for years, even decades, and are thriving in care,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AHF. “These same patients will suffer disruption of treatment and can suffer substandard care if they are simply dumped into the general patient population, or if their care is jobbed out by huge, for-profit insurance companies for treatment by a family medicine doctor or general practitioner without HIV expertise. We urge Florida Medicaid officials to reconsider and restore its Medicaid contract with Positive Healthcare.”
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 889,000 individuals in 39 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare
