• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

Vellequette has been volunteering in HIV prevention for 10 years. He is a senior international development studies student.

By Jim Vellequette

Next week we head to the polls, all the while questioning if our individual vote and convictions toward any particular candidate actually matter in a country with nearly 300 million people.

While the two major presidential candidates fight along a thin line of ideological difference, the issue of prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients has developed into a matter of life and death for many Americans, myself included.

Al Gore has most recently been brash enough to advocate for the expansion of the national health plan for seniors and the disabled. I am not a proponent of big national social programs, or a Democrat, but expansion of the Medicare program will provide assistance to millions of Americans who need this drug coverage benefit that their HMO plan is not required to provide.

In recent weeks, Gore and George W. Bush have traded barbs about prescription drug coverage through sound bites. The twist with the Bush plan is that the drugs I need could be delayed by up to four years through legislative financial dealmakers. A commitment to prescription drug coverage motivated by a slip in the polls equals a dangerous life-threatening promise to me.

At this point in your life, your retirement benefits are probably not even on your life radar. Unfortunately, prescription drug coverage is in the crosshairs of mine.

Ten years ago this month I was infected with HIV, which progressed to AIDS in 1993, and I retired, while still in my 20s, from my fledgling career at Boeing in Long Beach. When my Social Security Disability benefits started I was able to choose the Kaiser Permanente Health Foundation for my medical coverage. Thankfully it included prescription drug coverage, something not all Medicare plans offer. So why am I still worried about Bush winning this election?

This last July found me and 17 other UCLA students crammed into a bus traveling across Africa. While I have never been accused of packing lightly, on this trip I was required to bring over 22 pounds of prescription medication to keep my virus in check. I was panicked at the thought of losing them for I would have been forced to end my trip.

This medication is the only reason that I am alive; 51 pills a day at a cost exceeding $30,000 per year. You have heard about the HIV cocktail, that combination of at least three anti-viral medications that has prolonged so many lives. I take so many drugs I consider myself to be on the Long Island Ice Tea version. Thankfully, Kaiser still covers this through my Medicare coverage, but my prescriptions and medical appointment co-payments keep going up every year. In January 2001, they will double my co-payment for a medical appointment, after having tripled it in January, this year.

Recently, Kaiser pulled its entire operation out of the Northeastern states forcing many Medicare recipients to scramble to find new healthcare coverage. What is preventing Kaiser from leaving the highly competitive California market or from curtailing expenses by choosing to drop prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients, like myself?

What assurance do I have that I would be able to secure this type of coverage with any other HMO?

Going back to my Africa travels, as we traveled across South Africa the African American students rightfully said that they felt a connection to their heritage. I too felt a secret, sad connection with these same people knowing that in parts of Africa, the rate of HIV infection is well over 40 percent of the population, and having buried over 80 of my personal friends in the USA because of this disease.

Policy makers and pundits say that all we need to do is provide Africa with the medication to keep these people alive, with the caution that the only problem is that this medication will cost an average of $10,000 per person, per year.

This is dead wrong.

First, the $10,000 price tag is based on only the provision of basic anti-viral medication, not the quarterly medical exams and blood tests that I must undergo to make sure that the virus is in check and that the medication has not failed, as it does more than 50 percent of the time.

Secondly, once a person is getting medication for HIV, the disease may still progress and the person will require other expensive medications and sophisticated medical treatments to keep the myriad of HIV related conditions under control.

I offer the Africa scenario as a parallel to our own. We do not have a responsibility to save the world, or to be the international policeman, however often we choose to vacillate on this ideal. But with the recent xenophobic ideals being touted by George W. as a foreign policy framework, my concern for anyone who is not a white, wealthy, disease-free, heterosexual American male grows exponentially.

I take a lot of medication that is provided to me through my government subsidized medical coverage. I would assuredly be dead without this treatment, and I am so appreciative of this necessary help. But for the last eight months my chemotherapy has been failing and the amount of HIV in my system has increased my viral load to the point that it is now affecting me physically and scholastically.

The constant battle to control my viral load is normal for anyone with HIV. Scary, but somehow normal.

Unfortunately, I am resistant to all the drugs in the two major anti-HIV drug classes and with only one combination left utilizing the third class, my doctors have decided to save that protocol as insurance if my health deteriorates further.

At this point in the game, I am just happy to be here, every damn day, good or bad. My life will be like this for many years as a vaccine and a cure are not on the horizon, but hopefully, neither is my death, as long as I have access to prescription drug coverage, which right now is not guaranteed through Medicare and could go away at any time.

Gore is allegedly giving the store away by firmly promising to help Medicare recipients by providing this coverage almost immediately after he is elected. But Gore’s plan is the one that will keep me, and a lot of other people, alive a lot longer than a vote-getting promise by Bush who seems to be more beholden to a huge tax cut for the wealthiest percentage of Americans, than he is to increasing a national entitlement program.

If Bush would be this stingy in relation to the health of our senior citizens and the disabled out of regard for a tax cut, then the people of Africa, who so desperately need our support and assistance in light of their coming decade of death would be in even more dire straits with his election.

Is this argument that cut and dried as to appear so simple? For someone with AIDS, it is.

Go ahead. Vote for George W. Bush this November. Kill me.