Britons Pay Hundreds for H.I.V. Drugs. Why Do Americans Pay Thousands?

One-pill-a-day generic AIDS drugs for poor countries are hard to make because each ingredient is patented by a different pharmaceutical company. The Patent Pool provides a way for companies to donate their intellectual property safely.

Nurse Initiated Management of Antiretroviral Treatment (Nimart) provides special training to nurses, allowing them to prescribe antiretroviral medicines to manage HIV treatment, increasing access among those who need the care. Previously, only doctors were allowed to prescribe the drugs, but since Nimrat launched all 17 area clinics now offer treatment and an average of 732 patients started treatment each month in the first year the program started.

Injections and implants preventing HIV could be an important breakthrough especially for individuals who can not travel regularly to a health clinic, have trouble remembering to take a pill, or who want to secretly protect themselves.

Missing a doctor's appointment has a significant cost. Hospitals lose money and doctors lose time that they could be using to attend to other patients. Dr. Alex King believes that through testing and then implementing certain behavioral nudges, hospitals will stop losing as much money and patients will benefit from a better experience.

Throughout the country, issues of health care exclusivity and rising drug prices are being addressed with creative solutions. Innovating new medicines and medicine deliver systems, such as an alternative EpiPen, is proving to be a helpful way to work around these surging prices.

If rich people need life insurance, poor people need it more. Here’s how millions of poor people are getting it – including people with AIDS.

Germany, like the U.S., has a largely private healthcare system that relies on private doctors and private insurers. Like Americans, many Germans enroll in a health plan through work, splitting the cost with their employer. But Germany strictly limits how much patients have to pay out of their own pockets for a trip to the doctor, the hospital, or the pharmacy, making medical debt practically nonexistent.

The Mashkiki Waakaa’igan Pharmacy provides Native American patients with their prescriptions for no out-of-pocket expenses and provides culturally-conscious care.

Uganda has introduced community health insurance plans that helps serve those who do not find the free health insurance suffienct but find private insurance too expensive. Although it doesn't appease everyone and some drop out after joining, it has still served more than 10,000 people since implementation.

Both the successes and failures of the nationwide Ending the HIV Epidemic plan offers lessons for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for rural parts of the United States. One significant lesson is that of addressing health disparities linked to social determinants that prevent community members from accessing affordable or reliable health care. When "structural access to healthcare," was addressed in cities where HIV rates were higher, many saw those rates decrease, especially when the Affordable Care Act led to the expansion of Medicaid.