Baton Rouge is leading the nation in new Aid’s cases. The HIV and AIDS advocacy group HAART (HIV and AIDs Alliance Region Two) connects patients without insurance to programs like the Ryan White Foundation.
“The Ryan White Foundation is the insurer of last resorts it was created for people who are HIV positive who don’t have insurance” says Meta Rose Smith a HAART advocate. “I mean when I was diagnosed, I can’t image had it not been for the Ryan White program…when they told me the price of one of them medicines, I was like who’s going to pay for that?”
The affordable care act insurance agency Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana has decided not to longer accept payments from organizations like the Ryan white foundation. This could leave some low income HIV and AIDS patients without medication.
Blue Cross did not respond to request for an interview, but they released this statement on their website regarding their third party payment policy.
“…We are obligated to fight fraud and abuse every day.
We have seen in the past that a large percent of this abuse stems from third-party payments… This is why we are declining to enter in to this type of payment arrangement.
We are in no way suggesting that the Ryan White program has been involved in anything improper. But unfortunately, we cannot have an effective anti-fraud and abuse policy if we pick and choose which individuals must follow it and which ones don’t have to.”
This is a scary reality for the hundreds of patients who use the Ryan White Program to pay for their medication.
Millicent Foster has been living with HIV for twelve years and she says, “Without my medication my t-cell count will drop and my viral load will rise. That’s what you don’t want.”
HAART was determined not to let these patients health suffer.  Meta says, “When blue cross decided they weren’t going to take third party payments, immediately they were enrolled in another insurance program. The downside to that was for me, that my doctor wasn’t in the network.”
The national LGBT advocacy group Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit against these insurance companies. They have already gained a major win. Blue Cross Blue shield will have to honor third party payments from the Ryan White Foundation until November 15^th, 2014.
Meta Rose explains the relief they felt when they heard the news, “it was like a second line, like an insurance second line.”
This however is a temporary fix. House Representative Regina Barrow is working House Bill 633 which requires insurance agencies to accept third party payments.