The Treatment Access Expansion Project is the only national organization whose mission is focused exclusively on maximizing access to comprehensive care and treatment for low-income people living with HIV or AIDS. TAEP's health care access programs focus on both increasing the number of people receiving care and treatment, and on improving the quality of the health care received. This year, the political climate is right for major reform of the nation's systems of health care delivery. TAEP has identified 10 key principles for health care reform that are essential to any plan for reform that is to successfully improve early access to comprehensive, quality care for low-income people living with HIV/AIDS.

TAEP's work is focused on four specific goals:

Increased Testing
Promoting HIV testing initiatives to reach the approximately 250,000+ undiagnosed people living with HIV in the United States, and to get them in to care.
Related: Robert Greenwald presented on “HIV Testing in Massachusetts: Considerations for Increasing Consensual and Routine Testing” at the 5^th Annual HIV Update Conference. The conference, sponsored by the New England AIDS Education Training Center, took place in Provincetown, Massachusetts on April 25-26, 2009.

Elimination of Late Diagnosis
Addressing widespread late diagnosis to reverse the current trend of 40% of people living with HIV being diagnosed approximately nine years after date of infection and within one year of an AIDS diagnosis.

Facilitating Early Access to Care
Ensuring that the 45% of individuals aged 15-49 who are eligible for, but not receiving, HIV drugs have access to these life-saving medications, and expanding public/private health insurance programs for the 290,000+ individuals living with HIV who are currently insured.

Elimination of Stigma
Reducing fear and stigma associated with HIV that have strong negative effects on testing, care and disclosure--particularly among those most at risk for the disease.

To achieve these goals, TAEP's efforts include:

	Providing education and outreach in support of the Early Treatment for HIV Act to provide early and comprehensive care through Medicaid for those living with HIV and those co-infected with HIV and hepatitis.
	Training and education on the importance of establishing a new federal health care entitlement program for all uninsured persons with HIV (and those co-infected with HIV and hepatitis) whose incomes are below 250 percent of the federal poverty level based on the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine report Public Financing and Delivery of HIV/AIDS Care.
	Building coalitions in support of passage and implementation of the National Hepatitis B Act and the Hepatitis C Epidemic Control and Prevention Act to establish, promote and support comprehensive prevention, education, research and medical management programs for viral hepatitis.
	Supporting state-based efforts to expand access to Medicaid through the creation of federally authorized waiver of Medicaid budget neutrality requirements, on public health grounds, enabling states to readily expand eligibility to low income individuals with HIV infection not yet disabled by AIDS.
	Working to establish nationwide Medicaid coverage for HIV screening in keeping with the CDC's Revised Recommendations for HIV Testing of Adults, Adolescents, and Pregnant Women in Health-Care Settings and HIV screening as recommended in the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services report Healthy People 2010.
	Training and outreach to support federal legislation or an administrative reinterpretation of the Medicare Part D statute to allow AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAP) payments to count towards the true out of pocket cost limit or "TrOOP."
	Building collaborative approaches aimed at strengthening protections for access to lifesaving medicines under Medicare Part D by promulgating regulations that require prescription drug plans to cover all drugs for the six classes of drugs that are currently protected through subregulatory guidance, including all antiretrovirals, anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antineoplastics, antipsychotics, and immunosuppressants and new drugs in these classes within 90 days of FDA approval.
	Working to ensure that federal and state health care programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, and Ryan White, do not implement policies that cause financial hardship, or create barriers to HIV or hepatitis testing or the provision of life-saving care and treatment to beneficiaries living with HIV/AIDS or hepatitis.
TAEP is committed to bringing together advocates, consumers, health care providers and government leaders in support of widespread testing and early access to care and treatment for low-income people living with HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.