Maine Medicaid Plan Will Provide Early Treatment for HIV.

• Position: Brief Article

Maine is taking the lead with the nation's first pilot program to expand benefits to people living with HIV. The five-year demonstration project starts in September.

New drug treatments, unthinkable even a few years ago, are allowing people with HIV to live longer and healthier lives. At the same time, rates of infection continue to increase among the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, and injecting drug users-the very people who do not usually have adequate health care.

The complex issues of cost and access to the new drugs represent a growing concern to policymakers.

Current Medicaid eligibility requirements have historically excluded coverage for those with HIV who do not yet have full-blown AIDS, the life-threatening condition that results from HIV infection. Yet research shows that early treatment of HIV using new classes of drugs called highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) significantly improves the health of people living with HIV and makes progression to AIDS less likely.

More than three and a half years ago, Francis Finnegan, the director of Maine's Bureau of Medical Services, began thinking about ways to "rationalize Medicaid policy" when he first learned of the benefits of HAART.

"Medicaid...