Jeff Bingaman: “let me briefly describe one other amendment at this point. I called this amendment up yesterday, as well, amendment…”

“let me briefly describe one other amendment at this point. I called this amendment up yesterday, as well, amendment 2259, dealing with the Drug Assistance Program, an amendment Senator Smith and I have worked together on to add additional funding for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, or ADAP. We had an amendment voted on last night by Senator Coburn to shift funding to this function by taking funding from the Centers for Disease Control. Our amendment does not do that. Our amendment provides $74 million in much-needed funding. It would be emergency funding for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. This is a very meritorious amendment. It is an amendment I hope all colleagues will support. Some Members of this body voted against the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma in anticipation of supporting this very important amendment I am talking about now. The AIDS Drug Assistance Program provide life-saving assistance to over 136,000 uninsured or underinsured HIV-infected individuals each year. As the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has increased, largely due to advances in HIV treatment, the importance of and demand for ADAP has grown so that, as of September 2005, a total of 2,187 individuals were on ADAP waiting lists in nine States. As the National ADAP Monitoring Project says: When an individual is on a waiting list, they may not have access to HIV-related medications. We are talking about life-extending and life-saving medications.…”