1.7M People Visit Webpage Urging Gov. Schwarzenegger to Save California AIDS Care Plan
Webpage Is Part of Nation’s Largest AIDS Organization’s Ambitious Public Awareness Campaign to Save AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s ‘Positive Healthcare’ Primary Care Case Management Plan
March 30, 2009
More than 1.7 million people have visited a multi-media webpage urging California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to ‘Have a Heart’ and save ‘Positive Healthcare,’ a California primary care case management health care plan caring for low income people living with AIDS. The webpage is a part of an ambitious ongoing public awareness campaign spearheaded by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the operator of the Positive Healthcare program, intended to persuade the Governor and State health officials to halt the forced closure of the respected money-saving AIDS care plan. Without intervention from the Governor or other officials, Positive Healthcare will be forced to cease operating after this Tuesday, March 31st.
“This lifesaving program, which has been serving low-income Californians living with HIV/AIDS for fifteen years, has saved countless lives and saved the state millions of dollars in health care costs—nearly $7.5 million in the past five years alone,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “Unless Governor Schwarzenegger and state officials act quickly, this program is in danger of ending on March 31st—leaving some of the state's poorest and most vulnerable citizens without proper access to the health care they desperately need.”
Since first learning of the threat to Positive Healthcare’s existence in mid-December, AHF has been spearheading a multi-pronged campaign to save the AIDS care plan. This public awareness effort has included lobbying visits to state legislators’ offices by Positive Healthcare patients and nurse case managers; the filing of a lawsuit in mid-February in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles (case #BS 119149) to legally halt the forced closure of the plan; and an innovative grassroots media and web-based awareness campaign intended to alert the public-at-large to this short-sighted and punitive bureaucratic move by state health officials. Visitors to the webpage can send an e-letter to the Governor asking him to save Positive Healthcare as well as view news stories and general information on the issue. Yesterday, AHF posted a video parody of Governor Schwarzenegger that plays off an image from his film star days as “The Terminator.” The 60 second parody will also start airing as a paid TV commercial on select television stations in Sacramento and Los Angeles.
History of Positive Healthcare
AHF first established its Positive Healthcare program in California on April 1, 1995, when it introduced a groundbreaking Medicare Managed Care Plan—a ‘Special Needs Plan’ health care program—specifically designed for people living with an AIDS-defining illness who also lived in the Medi-Cal-designated service area of Los Angeles County, the only region AHF offered medical care and services at that time. The initial Positive Healthcare program, which operates under contract with California’s Department of Health Services (DHCS), was created with a prestigious federal ‘Special Projects of National Significance’ (SPNS) Grant. Since its inception, Positive Healthcare has both increased favorable patient health outcomes while significantly reducing the costs for such patients’ care to the state of California.
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About AHF: AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is the nation’s largest non-profit HIV/AIDS organization. AHF currently provides medical care and/or services to more than 98,000 individuals in 21 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean and Asia. Additional information is available at www.aidshealth.org
