Tim Barrus: New York Times

AIDS Clinics Cut-Back

Today, AIDS agencies are simply afraid that their funding will be cut back, and it will, the reality remains that people with HIV in the rural South cannot access HIV meds.

The structure we have is cruelly off limits to people in the South struggling to survive.

The laws about who can receive HIV treatment, and who cannot, are based on race and geography.

That is not health care, that is not a plan, that is genocide.

All states have multiple testing sites. But after you are tested, you better be white if you need antiretrovirals. 

It gets worse.

On average, there are only two urban public health sites per state that offer medication. They are all separated by hundreds of miles. Since you can only get many of these medications every thirty days which means 1.) You get diagnosed, 2) you better have a car (this is a death sentence for people living in mountain hollows, 3.) you better pray there is no snow storm, just try getting through mountain roads that have been closed anyway, 4.) they throw you off the rolls if you miss one appointment. This is a public policy of revenge. Racial minorities get burned.

There are guards with guns at AIDS clinics.

What does a gun have to do with health care. Africa does better. Trump to evangelicals word for word: “We must end the flow of cash to AIDS programs. It is not my fault that these people, most of whom are black, made poor decisions. Why should the government pay? The disease is their own fault. I will end funding to AIDS.”

It has begun.