Everyone has AIDs
© Paramount Pictures, Scott Rudin ProductionsFrom the Movie Team America, World Police

The Affordable Care Act was designed to make health care more ... affordable. By expanding Medicaid, subsidizing private coverage, and barring discrimination by insurers, the law will extend health coverage to an estimated 25 million previously uninsured people by 2017 - an epochal achievement in its own right.

But while preventing countless bankruptcies, Obamacare may also help contain the AIDS epidemic. Writing in the journal Health Affairs this week, researchers from the University of Southern California project that a half-million people will find out their HIV status between 2013 and 2017, as they gain access to regular health care. More than 2,600 of them will learn that they're HIV-positive - a revelation that will improve their survival prospects and slow the spread of HIV through communities.

Voluntary testing is a powerful antidote to HIV transmission, but nearly a fifth of this country's 1.1 million infected people are still unaware of their status. As a result, many spend years unwittingly spreading the virus before they get sick and get diagnosed. Of the 50,000 new infections that occur each year, roughly half come from people who are "HIV unaware."


Comment: We don't understand, if they don't know they're infected, how exactly do you?


Past research has shown that people are far more likely to get tested when they have health insurance. Unfortunately, people at high risk of HIV are disproportionately poor and uninsured. Since people with insurance have consistently higher testing rates than people who lack it, the USC researchers applied those higher rates to the population expected to gain coverage by 2017.


Comment: Ah so. You mean you pulled that number out of your Arses? Cause let's be honest here, this is a cush piece to promote Obama Care using the threat of the AIDs Epidemic that was supposed to kill us all by now, but kinda didn't...Any disease is serious, and apparently serious business too.


...

How, exactly, would all of this this help slow the spread of HIV? Studies show that people who know they're infected have less unprotected sex. But behavior is just part of the equation. When people with HIV get consistent antiretroviral treatment, it doesn't just preserve their health and extend their lives. By reducing the amount of virus in their body fluids, it also lowers - by 92% to 96% - their chances of infecting others during unprotected sex.

In light of those findings, U.S. health authorities now recommend that infected people start treatment as soon as they're diagnosed and stay on it indefinitely. In another new study, also appearing in Health Affairs this week, researchers surmise that early treatment for HIV prevented 13,500 infections every year between 1996 and 2009 in the U.S., saving $128 billion worth of lost life expectancy - this despite the fact that two-thirds of the nation's HIV-positive people receive inconsistent care and only one in four has the virus fully in check.

Besides helping millions of high-risk people learn their status, the Affordable Care Act will improve access to care, counseling and treatment for many of those who test positive. Unfortunately, some of the states with the greatest need are still resisting federal help. In yet another Health Affairs studypublished this week, researchers estimate that just over half of nation's low-income, uninsured, HIV-positive people (58,000 out of 115,000) live in the 23 states that are boycotting the Medicaid expansion. Most of them (33,600) live in Texas, Florida and Georgia.


Comment: Wait, I don't understand. 115,000? Here's some perspective:
About 3.3 billion people - half of the world's population - are at risk of malaria. In 2010, there were about 219 million malaria cases (with an uncertainty range of 154 million to 289 million) and an estimated 660 000 malaria deaths (with an uncertainty range of 490 000 to 836 000). Increased prevention and control measures have led to a reduction in malaria mortality rates by more than 25% globally since 2000 and by 33% in the WHO African Region.

People living in the poorest countries are the most vulnerable to malaria. In 2010, 90% of all malaria deaths occurred in the WHO African Region, mostly among children under five years of age.
To translate that for you, 660,000 deaths is 25% better than it was before 2000 ( that's the 21st century btw).

What's Obama Care doing about The Malaria Epidemic? What about Cancer, or Autoimmune disorders?
Each of these nearly 100 autoimmune diseases derails lives. Taken collectively, these diseases, which also include type 1 diabetes, Graves' disease, vasculitis, myasthenia gravis, connective tissue diseases, autoimmune Addison's disease, vitiligo, rheumatoid arthritis, hemolytic anemia, celiac disease, and scleroderma are now the Number Two cause of chronic illness in America and the third leading cause of Social Security disability behind heart disease and cancer. (Acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, by contrast, is not an autoimmune disease; in fact, it is entirely different. In AIDS a virus attacks the immune system and destroys it, whereas in autoimmune disease, the immune system leads the attack, mistaking the body's tissue for an invader and turning on the body itself.)

From Alternet
We'll tell ya what Obama Care is doing. Jack Poo( that's right, we said it).


The rest of the country is moving forward without those states. But the new findings should give their leaders pause. The research shows yet again that expanding health care can save both lives and money. When policymakers refuse on political grounds, they harm the people they're sworn to serve.