Leaders in Congress and the Obama administration commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Ryan White CARE Act—a landmark piece of legislation that helps victims of HIV/AIDS.
Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, authored this bill along with the late Senator Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., to address deficiencies in HIV/AIDS treatment and research and to ensure that patients have access to care without regard to location or ability to pay. Senator Hatch spoke at the White House this afternoon, praising the success of this bipartisan legislation.
The bill was named to honor Ryan White, a young boy who acquired HIV from a blood transfusion in 1984, a time when the disease was still widely misunderstood. After his diagnosis, White was told he had to use separate bathrooms and was even expelled from school, among other indignities. His experience raised awareness of the challenges facing HIV/AIDS patients. Four months after White passed away, Congress honored his memory by enacting the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act. This law improves the availability of care for low-income, uninsured, and under-insured victims of HIV/AIDS and their families.
At the White House, Hatch said:
“This is a landmark piece of legislation. It is public health legislation of the highest sort. Its purpose is to alleviate pain and suffering, to find ways of ending the pain and suffering and the difficulties that AIDS has brought throughout this country. It is dedicated to Ryan White because of the courage that he displayed and because of the life that he lived, and it is one of the finest pieces of legislation to come out of the Senate.”
Also speaking at the White House Ceremony, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy said:
“We’re here to reflect on the critical legislation that has made our country a healthier, better, and a more fair place. We are here to celebrate 25 years of that scientific, social, and political progress. Progress that allows people who are living with HIV to be full, active members of our community. Progress that has given a voice back to people who had no voice. And progress that reminds us that nobody in our community should ever be forced to stay silent. Progress that has given a new lease on life to many who are living with HIV.”
The full speech, as prepared for delivery, is below:
Thank you for inviting me to be here today.
We live in a contentious time. There are many issues that deeply divide our nation and our political parties.
Strange as it may seem to us today, HIV/AIDS used to be one of those issues. In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, relatively little was known about where HIV came from or how it was transmitted. People were scared of the disease and stigmatized those who had it.
Ryan White helped to change all that. He was a young boy who acquired HIV from a blood transfusion. He was expelled from school, told he had to use separate bathrooms, and suffered many other indignities. Some people would even refuse to shake his hand for fear that they would contract AIDS. But through it all, Ryan retained a positive attitude. He helped to change misconceptions about AIDS and made a profound difference for millions of Americans.
By 1990, we understood a great deal more about AIDS. We knew it could not be transmitted through casual contact. We knew it could be transmitted during pregnancy. We knew it was not confined to any particular demographic or community.
But treatment for HIV/AIDS was woefully underfunded. As Representative Henry Waxman noted on the House floor, Medicaid required AIDS patients to be totally disabled before they could qualify for benefits. Community-based programs were collapsing under increasing caseloads. We needed a mechanism to assist people at all stages of the disease, to buttress home and community-based services, and to provide access to life-saving medications.
So, together with my friend and colleague Ted Kennedy, I authored what ultimately became the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resource Emergency Act, or Ryan White CARE Act. Our goal with the bill was to address deficiencies in HIV/AIDS treatment and to ensure that AIDS victims had access to care without regard to location or ability to pay.
At the time, Teddy was Chairman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. I was the Ranking Republican. We determined early on that the bill should be bipartisan and have broad support. HIV/AIDS treatment should be an issue on which both parties can agree. None of us should sit idly by while our fellow citizens suffer and die.
Still, advancing the bill through Congress took a great deal of time and effort. Some members wanted to focus resources on inner cities and early treatment. Others wanted to distribute funds more broadly and to emphasize access to medication. There were debates about whether to expand Medicaid or to instead provide alternative funding streams.
Ultimately, Senator Kennedy and I were able to put together a bill with broad bipartisan support. It passed the Senate 95 to 4. That’s an amazing vote count when you consider that AIDS was, at the time, still controversial in some quarters. I attribute the bill’s strong bipartisan support to Senator Kennedy’s leadership and to the heroic work of people like Ryan White and his mother, Jeanne, in educating the public and members of Congress about HIV/AIDS.
Teddy and I spent several days together on the Senate floor managing the bill. I was pleased to be able to offer a number of successful amendments, including an amendment to ensure the safety of blood donations and an amendment to change the name of the bill to honor Ryan White, who had sadly passed away the month before. I also worked to ensure that the bill contained funding for all states and territories, rather than just particular states or geographic areas, because HIV/AIDS was, and continues to be, a nationwide problem.
I’d like to close by repeating something I said on the Senate floor during the final debate on the Ryan White CARE Act back in 1990: “[T]his is a landmark piece of legislation. [It] is public health legislation of the highest sort. Its purpose is to alleviate pain and suffering, to find ways of ending [the] pain and suffering and the difficulties that AIDS has brought throughout this country. . . . [It] is dedicated to Ryan White because of the courage that he displayed and because of the life that he lived. . . . [And] it is one of the finest pieces of legislation to come out of [the Senate].”
Again, thank you for inviting me to be here. The bill we celebrate today, the Ryan White CARE Act, has done tremendous good for our country. It has helped to alleviate pain and suffering and has improved quality of life. It has made a significant difference for millions of Americans. I am glad to be with you today to commemorate its passage.
