[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 27 (Monday, July 10, 1995)]
[Pages 1188-1189]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Letter to Congressional Leaders on the ``Ryan White CARE Act''

July 5, 1995

Dear Mr. Speaker:  (Dear Mr. Leader:)

    I am writing to urge you to lead the Congress in passing the 
reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act before the summer recess. We 
cannot allow this crucial program to lapse.
    There is strong bipartisan support for the Ryan White CARE Act. The 
initial legislation was approved by overwhelming margins in both houses 
(95-4 in the Senate and 408-14 in the House) and signed into law by 
President Bush. Funding for this program has been endorsed from both 
sides of the aisle throughout the five years of the program and the 
reauthorization bill in the Senate has 60 co-sponsors. It is a program 
vital to the lives of Americans living with HIV and AIDS. Its existence 
has had a dramatic impact on the quality and length of their lives while 
helping to reduce the cost of their care.
    The CARE Act provides direct services to people living with HIV and 
AIDS through grants to states, cities, community organizations, and 
local clinics. It emphasizes outpatient care in clinics and other 
facilities and

[[Page 1189]]

is designed to relieve the burden on public hospitals and other more 
expensive inpatient facilities.
    It has been a tremendous success in meeting this mandate. By 
lessening the demand on public hospitals and other facilities, valuable 
inpatient resources have been freed to care for patients with other 
diseases, and people with HIV and AIDS have been able to lead more 
productive lives in their communities. The CARE Act approach serves as a 
model for delivering more cost-effective health care for people with all 
diseases.
    In 1994, the CARE Act provided care to more than 200,000 uninsured 
and underinsured people living with HIV or AIDS and early intervention 
services to another 85,000 people. The Act also funded HIV counseling 
and testing to nearly 100,000 Americans, provided pharmaceutical 
assistance to 75,000 individuals, and supported more than 15,000 women 
and children participating in AIDS-related clinical trials.
    Let me share with you the story of one person who has been helped by 
this program--one person whose experience with the CARE Act is typical 
of literally hundreds of thousands of other Americans who have benefited 
from this law. ``Debbie'' is a 27 year old woman living with AIDS in a 
rural part of South Carolina. Until recently, few doctors in Debbie's 
hometown were willing to treat AIDS patients in part because so many 
were uninsured. With funding from the Ryan White CARE Act, the County 
Health Department opened a clinic in the town of Orangeburg that 
operated six days a month with a rotating staff of five physicians and 
three nurses. The clinic's staff has taught Debbie's mother to care for 
her daughter at home. When Debbie is too sick to come to the clinic, the 
staff comes to her. Not only has this prevented more costly 
hospitalizations, but it provides Debbie and her mother peace of mind. 
Debbie's Mom calls the clinic's staff her ``guardian angels.''
    The Ryan White CARE Act is a model of compassionate caring for 
people in need. At a time when AIDS is the leading cause of death of 
young adults, we cannot let reauthorization of the CARE Act be held up 
by divisive arguments about how people contracted HIV. Nor should we be 
deterred by the false argument that people with HIV and AIDS are getting 
more help than those with other diseases. In fact, total federal 
spending in FY 1995 for research, treatment prevention, Medicaid, 
Medicare, and income supplements for AIDS is less than one-third that 
for cancer and less than one-sixth that for heart disease. (AIDS 
spending is $6 billion, cancer is $17.5 billion, and heart disease is 
$38 billion.)
    In the United States, an average of 220 Americans are being 
diagnosed with AIDS every day and an average of 109 Americans are dying 
of this disease each day. Now is not the time to retreat in our national 
response to this terrible disease. We must move forward to meet the very 
real needs of Americans living with HIV and AIDS. We can certainly do 
more, we cannot do any less.
    I hope you will join me in urging the Congress to move forward 
promptly with a five-year reauthorization of this vital program without 
complicated amendments so that we can once again show the American 
people that their government can provide the assistance they deserve.
    Sincerely,
                                                  Bill Clinton

Note: Identical letters were sent to Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House 
of Representatives, and Bob Dole, Senate majority leader.