Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards has "unveiled an aggressive plan for combating HIV/AIDS in the United States and abroad," the Cox News Service article began. Mr. Edwards declared the effort "a moral imperative" and proposes to spend fifty billion dollars over the next five years battling HIV/AIDS abroad. Mercifully and without surprise, there are no estimates of the domestic price tag. Considering his call for universal health care "to cover HIV-positive patients before they reach the later stages of the disease," the cost will no doubt be staggering. According to the "Until There’s A Cure" website, there are one million infected Americans, with 40,000 new cases developing every year. The Avert website pegs the annual cost just for drug combinations known to greatly prolong life among HIV-patients at $20,000 per year per patient, roughly 20 billion dollars to cover one million already contaminated. That tidy sum does not include doctor visits, hospital stays, extraordinary treatments and care for full-blown AIDS sufferers, etc. But, "this is a fight for people’s lives…we have a moral imperative to do much more and to do it much better." Who can argue with that?
Casting the proposal in such lofty ethical tones does deliver a strong message. The former Senator’s intimation is, get with the program or be declared immoral. Hmmm, there is thin ice dead ahead.
Edwards’ campaign website devotes a lengthy section to his proposal titled "Ending the HIV/AIDS Epidemic" and detailing nearly twenty specific ideas to defeat the disease. The first paragraph offered a glimmer of hope, "HIV is a preventable disease." Yes it is, but the web-page makes clear that Edwards’ notion of prevention runs to education, clean syringes, and condoms. Glaringly omitted is any mention of the obvious; personal responsibility plays an overwhelming role in defeating HIV/AIDS. We are never more than a generation away from its complete eradication. If every sexually active American found a partner and remained faithful to him or her, and every intravenous drug user stopped sharing needles, the spread of the disease would come to a screeching halt. HIV-AIDS sufferers are not like cancer victims, who contract the big C through no fault of their own, save perhaps lung cancer patients. Overwhelmingly, HIV-AIDS is spread through promiscuous sex and needle sharing, 97% to 99% of the time according Avert. If American taxpayers are under a moral imperative to fight this disease, how about drug users and the sexually active? Given the deadly and costly nature of this dread enemy, is it too much to ask for a dramatic decrease in dangerous behavior?
An interesting addendum to this discussion involves the Magic Johnson effect. The Laker star was discovered to be HIV-positive in 1991, ending a brilliant NBA career. Publicity surrounding Magic’s illness had a profound impact on, especially, behavior among gay men. Many of the infamous bathhouses closed and the hyper sexual activity in that population — men having sex with multiple partners in a night — rapidly tapered off. The world watched poor Magic, expecting him to experience the nightmarish course of deterioration ending in an ugly death. Then, a funny thing happened. Magic didn’t die. He was one of the first to receive the aforementioned drug cocktail inhibiting the progress of the disease. We all rejoiced, but word of the elixir spread as fast as the news of his initial infection. Incredibly, the promiscuous behavior returned as joy replaced fear, a happenstance calling into question just where the moral imperative lies in all this.
One of the troubling issues of taxpayer-funded universal health care is the cost of caring for the deliberately foolish. If a motorcyclist wants to ride at 100 miles an hour on wet roads, it’s his life. But, under the Edwards’ plan, "True Universal Health Care" to quote his website, the bill to fix the motorcyclist’s broken body falls immorally to the taxpayer. Treatment for the 40,000 new HIV-AIDS patients every year fits into the same category, easily prevented damage incurred through recklessness and irresponsibility. As soon as the at risk groups begin to demonstrate personal responsibility, many of the rest of us will be a lot more receptive to helping those already infected.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Health Insurance Debate, Politics