Arlen Specter: “I am not sure we will ever have enough money in the Labor-HHS bill. It is a constant struggle. I have to say that one…”

“I am not sure we will ever have enough money in the Labor-HHS bill. It is a constant struggle. I have to say that one thing which alarmed the committee is the high cost of these new AIDS medications. Pharmaceutical research, as you well know, is extremely time intensive and costly, and this is especially true for AIDS drugs. The committee was very concerned about the lack of timely national data available to estimate the demands for AIDS medications funded by the ADAP program, and also, I might add, about the wide variation in State Medicaid policies on individual eligibility, benefits, and drug availability. We have asked the Secretary to develop benchmarks to measure progress in this area and to increase data collection and information sharing, and so we hope to have a better guideline in the future.”