ETHA :: The Early Treatment of HIV Act (H.R. 1616, S.833) 

What Is ETHA?
The Early Treatment of HIV Act (ETHA) gives states the option of readily amending their Medicaid eligibility requirements to extend coverage to pre-disabled poor and low-income people living with HIV. ETHA is modeled after the successful Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention and Treatment Act of 2000 (BCCA), which has allowed all 50 states to provide early access to Medicaid to women with cancer. As with the BCCA, ETHA includes an enhanced federal match rate of 65%-83% to encourage states to participate.

What Does ETHA Accomplish?
ETHA addresses a cruel irony in the Medicaid system--that under current Medicaid rules in most states, people must become disabled by AIDS before they can receive access to the Medicaid-provided care and treatment that could have prevented them from becoming so ill in the first place. ETHA brings Medicaid eligibility rules in line with federal government guidelines on the standard of care for treating HIV. ETHA also helps address growing waiting lists for access to life-saving medications and limited access to comprehensive health care in many parts of the country.

What are the Benefits of ETHA?
TAEP retained PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) when ETHA was first introduced to assess the effects of early health care access under the bill. PwC's study found that, if ETHA were enacted, over a ten-year period its provisions would:

	Reduce the death rate for persons living with HIV on Medicaid by fifty percent (50%);
	Slow disease progression and improve health outcomes, with 35,000 more individuals with CD4 counts above 500 under ETHA than under baseline Medicaid; and,
	Decrease federal Medicaid spending by nearly $32 million.

ETHA has major implications for not only HIV care and treatment, but also prevention. Access to HIV therapies reduces the amount of HIV virus present in a person's bloodstream (viral load)--a key factor in decreasing infectiousness and reducing a person's ability to transmit HIV. In fact, over the past few years several studies have demonstrated the effect of early access to care on HIV transmission and infectivity. For example, a 2004 study published in AIDS found that HIV antiretroviral therapies reduce infectiousness by 60%--confirming that early access to HIV treatment is an important HIV prevention tool.

ETHA's success depends on bipartisan support-and we need your help to secure even more co-sponsors. The more bipartisan the list of co-sponsors, the greater chance that it be enacted. Contact your members of Congress and urge them to support ETHA this year.