Joe Barton: “Under the old law, the funding was based one-half on a formula and one-half on discretionary, and the discretionary…”

“Under the old law, the funding was based one-half on a formula and one-half on discretionary, and the discretionary counted active cases and also cumulatively, I believe, cases of individuals who had expired because of the infection. Under the new formula that we passed in the reauthorization bill, we changed the formula to two-thirds instead of one-half, and we reduced the discretionary from one-half to one-third. We did put a hold harmless provision in on the formula side, but we did not apply that hold harmless to the discretionary side. So we also had a specific hold harmless for the first year of the new authorization which we are currently in. The effect of the language that is in the pending bill basically puts hold harmless not only on the formula funding, which we increase from one-half to two-thirds, but it also puts it on the discretionary side, the effect of which would be areas which don't have as large a patient count as they once did would get more discretionary funding; conversely, those areas that 5 or 6 years ago, perhaps, didn't have much of an HIV/AIDS epidemic would be shortchanged.”