February 27, 2007

Suozzi Announces Nassau-Suffolk Lawsuit against Feds to Save AIDS/HIV Funding

-- Long Islanders with HIV/AIDS to Lose Services Including Housing and Food Assistance, Emergency Financial Assistance, Health Education, Transportation and Child Care

Mineola, N.Y. – Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi today announced that Nassau and Suffolk Counties are filing a lawsuit against the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for “drastic and unauthorized” cuts to vital services for Long Islanders living with HIV/AIDS. The cuts are scheduled to take effect March 1.

The lawsuit alleges that HHS’ interpretation of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act of 2006, is “capricious” and “patently unlawful,” and puts Long Island’s HIV and AIDS patients in grave danger of losing essential care and services. Nassau and Suffolk counties currently receive a total of more than $6 million in federal funding to provide services to people living with HIV/AIDS, including transportation, housing and emergency food assistance, health education and child care.

“Some of the most frail and needy HIV/AIDS patients in Nassau and Suffolk Counties will suffer because the federal government has misinterpreted the new law,” Suozzi said. “We are now moving forward with litigation. Our low-income, uninsured and under-insured residents living with HIV/AIDS depend on the treatment and support services provided through the Ryan White CARE Act, and cuts in services will devastate these programs and hurt thousands of people living with HIV/AIDS.”

“It is essential that this critical funding continue as more than 3,000 people in Nassau and Suffolk depend on it for essential medical treatment and supportive care,” said Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy.

A half dozen non profit agencies and Long Islanders who have benefited from Ryan White funding joined the lawsuit, including Traci Bowman, a 44-year-old Central Islip woman with AIDS who said she received critical help for herself and her 11-year-old son via Ryan White funding. “I changed my life with the help of several agencies funded under the Ryan White CARE Act,” said Bowman. “I could not have done it without them and, indeed, I continue to require their assistance.”

She cited Thursday’s Child of Long Island, the Long Island Association for AIDS Care, Inc., Catholic Charities and Nassau University Medical Center (NUMC) as among those groups that provided her with food vouchers, rental assistance, outpatient substance abuse treatment and medical care. “Thanks to the many Ryan White-funded organizations that have assisted me over the past 12 years…I have changed my life for the better…Now I am a good mother, I am gainfully employed, and I am working to make a similar difference in the lives of people who are now in the same circumstances I once was in.”

“If Ryan White funding is cut to the Nassau-Suffolk metropolitan area, I am afraid that we will lose all of the ground we have gained against AIDS and HIV during the past 16 years,” said Jerome Knight. Knight said he received critical assistance from the Five Towns Community Center, the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York’s Federation Employment and Guidance Service, Inc. and NUMC. “I know it was the combination of medical and non-medical Ryan White-funded services that enabled me to turn my life around.” 

According to the legislation, a region is no longer a designated Eligible Metropolitan Area (EMA) when it fails to meet two criteria. The two criteria are: a region must have 3,000 people living with AIDS and it must have 2,000 new AIDS cases reported during the past five years. Long Island meets the requirement for people living with AIDS as it had 3,428 people living with AIDS as of Dec. 31, 2005. There were 1,505 newly diagnosed cases between 2001-2005.

In a letter to HHS earlier this month, Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer and Congressmen Steve Israel and Peter King pointed out that according to the EMA eligibility language, the Nassau-Suffolk region only has to meet one of the two requirements to qualify as an EMA.

“This interpretation is obviously the correct one,” Suozzi said. “And with more than 3,000 people living with AIDS, Long Island clearly qualifies for these funds. To yank away our EMA status would tear down the infrastructure both our Counties have created to give residents with HIV/AIDS the support they need to lead healthy and productive lives.”

“Adding a second, more restrictive criteria, impacts not only those presently infected but will deny care to newly-infected individuals,” said Levy.

The lawsuit requests that HHS “correctly apply the congressionally-mandated grantee eligibility criteria, and place the Nassau-Suffolk area into the grantee category it previously occupied …. with the ability to share in a nationwide $458 million fund…” Funding for the program has remained essentially unchanged, but the federal government wants to reallocate those funds.

The Modernization Act of 2006 also seeks to shift funds away from vital support services, such as housing assistance, emergency food assistance and help in managing finances. Nassau County – along with co-plaintiffs Long Island Minority AIDS Coalition, Inc.; Thursday’s Child, Inc., a Patchogue-based AIDS organization, and four Long Islanders living with HIV/AIDS – requested that Nassau and Suffolk be granted a waiver of this new rule.

“This cut in HIV/AIDS funding is the latest example of the Bush administration’s attempts to reduce New York's fair share of federal income tax dollars that help provide vital services on Long Island. These funds help keep people living with HIV/AIDS in medical care, which keeps them healthy and greatly reduces the possibility of transmission to others,” said Michael Wade, Chair of Nassau/Suffolk HIV Health Services Planning Council. “The Department of HHS is about to undermine our service delivery infrastructure and raise barriers to care for many of our residents.”