In this US News & World Report article, infectious disease specialists and activists (including Whitman-Walker Health COO Meghan Davies) warn that Medicaid cuts and proposed CDC and NIH reductions will undo decades of progress in controlling the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

EXCERPT:

“For more than 10 years, an HIV diagnosis was seen as a certain death sentence, with over 40,000 people dying from AIDS before the first drug to treat the virus was approved by the Food and Drug Administration and placed on the market.

Infectious disease specialists like Dr. Abraham Verghese, a professor with Stanford University’s department of medicine who treated thousands of patients during the epidemic in the 1980s and early 1990s, became accustomed to losing patients within a matter of weeks or months. But with the help of science, activism from patients and support from the federal government, rapid advancements in treatment and prevention have curbed mortality rates and allowed patients to live longer.

Those same doctors and activists now say decades of progress stand to be undone as cuts to Medicaid through the “big, beautiful bill” and expansive proposed reductions to funding for federal HIV prevention, medications, support services and research threaten to raise infection rates and worsen mortality rates.

Patients today require a combination of up to three pills as well as routine surveillance. But the high cost of the medications – up to $46,000 out of pocket – has made having some form of Medicaid an absolute necessity for vulnerable patients.

Meghan Davies, the chief operating officer at Whitman-Walker, a health clinic in Washington, D.C., says roughly a quarter of their patients rely on it and nearly half depend on it as their primary coverage. She says patients also use it to access behavioral health services, dental care and primary medical visits.

Read full article here: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-08-12/a-dangerous-setback-hiv-aids-activists-warn-of-fallout-from-medicaid-cdc-cuts