NY Times on Hillary Clinton's AIDS Plan -- and the other candidates

November 27, 2007

Clinton to Offer an AIDS Policy, Joining Her Main Rivals

By PATRICK HEALY and LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will propose steps today to strengthen the government’s strategy to battle H.I.V. and AIDS in the United States and the rest of the world, becoming the latest Democratic presidential candidate to commit to a significant expansion of federal efforts to combat the epidemic.

Mrs. Clinton’s two main rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama and John Edwards, have already released plans of their own. Taking Mrs. Clinton’s into account, the three approaches are similar in terms of spending, goals and differences with President Bush’s AIDS policy.

Like her rivals, Mrs. Clinton proposed spending at least $50 billion cumulatively on global initiatives to combat H.I.V. and AIDS by 2013; the Bush administration has budgeted $30 billion for that period. She would also double money for H.I.V./AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health to $5.2 billion annually.

Mr. Edwards, in a plan released in September, promises to “strengthen” financing for such research. Mr. Obama, who put out parts of his plan at different times this year, said he would “expand” such financing.

The three candidates would also not limit prevention strategies to abstinence-only sex education, as Mr. Bush has emphasized.

According to a paper outlining the Clinton plan, which her campaign provided, Mrs. Clinton supports giving young people “age-appropriate information about H.I.V./AIDS and how to protect themselves against it.” She also backs federal financing for needle exchange programs, as do Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama.

H.I.V. infections have plateaued at an estimated 40,000 new ones in the United States annually for about a decade. Mrs. Clinton said in the paper that she would work toward “significantly reducing the number of new infections” and would set measurable goals and timelines for increasing prevention efforts and expanding access to treatment.

Mr. Obama’s approach to reducing new cases is almost identical to what Mrs. Clinton proposes.

Mr. Edwards has said his strategy would include holding his administration’s health and human services secretary “accountable” for issuing an annual H.I.V./AIDS report that shows progress on Mr. Edwards’s goals. He also has said he would appoint a “strong” director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.

All three candidates also pledge to provide and improve medical care for people with H.I.V. and AIDS, chiefly through multibillion-dollar health insurance programs that each has proposed this year.

Mrs. Clinton, who will discuss her plan today while campaigning in South Carolina, thinks that the federal strategy for fighting H.I.V. and AIDS is diffuse and uncoordinated, campaign advisers said.

Strategies to combat AIDS have not been a major point of discussion among the leading Republican presidential candidates. But some of them have talked on the campaign trail about the need to do more.

At a town-hall-style meeting Saturday in Nashua, N.H., former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York said he would add to the money that Mr. Bush has provided to combat AIDS in Africa. He said he would also give aid to fight malaria and try to help Africa by increasing trade and commerce between the United States and its nations.