TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV\/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) – Florida lawmakers are working to find solutions after the state health department announced cuts to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program that will affect nearly 10,000 people starting March 1.<\/p>\n
The Florida Department of Health is cutting $120 million from the program, which provides life-saving HIV medication to eligible residents. The cuts will reduce eligibility from people at or below 400% of the Federal Poverty Level to 130% of that level.<\/p>\n
The state says the cuts are needed because insurance premiums are rising and because of federal cuts to the Ryan White grant used to fight HIV and AIDS.<\/p>\n
State data shows Florida has seen an increase in new HIV and AIDS diagnoses since 2020. Doctors say the changes could lead to more infections.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the measures that were in place to prevent that are no longer there,\u201d said Dr. George Ellis, an Orlando Health urologist. \u201cSo I think it\u2019s important from a medical standpoint to make sure that patients get some medication as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senate President Ben Albritton said lawmakers are taking the issue seriously and looking for ways to help.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re taking this seriously. Number 1, it\u2019s the right thing to do. And 2, I\u2019m proud that we are,\u201d Albritton said.<\/p>\n
However, Albritton stopped short of committing to fully funding the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to say we are going to backfill any of this,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are clearly looking at what are the opportunities. It may not just be funding. It may be other opportunities to provide support at some level.\u201d<\/p>\n
House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell said she hopes the House will support Senate efforts to address the cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could reverse progress and we don\u2019t wanna see that happen,\u201d Driskell said. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be putting Floridians in a death sentence because we can\u2019t get it together and negotiate and come up with a good solution for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Albritton said details still need to be worked out since lawmakers are early in the budget process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt won\u2019t be because we walked away from the issue,\u201d he said. \u201cIt will because it was larger than what we could accomplish.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state is encouraging people who need the medication to connect with other HIV\/AIDS resources in their community.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WCTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV\/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) – Florida lawmakers are working to find solutions after the state health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[62402,28575,65240,4218,1442,13116,12665,28,2161,571,65241,28576,1443,1432,13324,99,232,234,233],"class_list":["post-132750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-adap","tag-aids","tag-aids-drug-assistance-program","tag-ben-albritton","tag-cody-butler","tag-doh","tag-fentrice-driskell","tag-florida","tag-government","tag-health","tag-health-department","tag-hiv","tag-legislature","tag-lgbtq","tag-medication","tag-politics","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}