Medicare and Medicaid as trying to verify if lipoatrophy (aka AIDS wasting) treatments should be covered under their plan, just like breast replacement after chemotherapy for cancer. If you yourself have suffered from low self-esteem, lost a significant over from your AIDS wasting, fired from a job (this is illegal but still could happen,) or felt like a walking skeleton with AIDS writing all over you’re wrinkly face, or never wanted to leave you house out of pure shame. Are you a friend or family member of Dave and you want to express how he feels like himself again after the treatment, walking tall with his head up high. Possibly, you want to have a date with Dave, or you just think he’s hot. Whatever the reason, please go to the Medicare and Medicaid website and click the orange box marked “COMMENT” on the top right. Submissions are until February 16, 2009 and, as David Evans so eloquently wrote in AIDSmeds.com, “comments should make the case that the treatment is reconstructive, rather than cosmetic, and elaborate on the mental and physical toll that facial wasting can have on a person.” Please don’t used by name, and basically tone it down, you’re dealing with federal government, I was just being silly, seriously. NOW DO IT!
WOULD YOU BE SCARED OF THIS GUY?
WOULD YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE IF YOU LOOKS LIKE THIS GUY?
WOULD YOU FIRED THIS GUY?
WOULD YOU FEEL LIKE AN AIDS BILLBOARD IF YOU WERE THIS GUY?
WOULD YOU APROACH THIS GUY FOR A DATE?
Of course HGH and "cosmetic" products like Sculptra SHOULD be covered by ALL INSURANCES. We do not deny a replacement limb to an amputee or beast reconstruction for women needing aggressive surgery for breast cancer.
While there are many reasons as to why lipodystrophy treatment are hard to get paid for (even WHEN FDA approved and covered) has many causes, but the biggest issues stopping this from happening pride, greed, and fame seeking by a group of medial clinicians and researchers that cannot get their heads out of their asses and come up with a unified, medically acceptable, and evidence based definition of lipodystropy (Hell, they can't even agree on what to call it - let alone define it.)
So as the ones that could simply get together, form a "blue ribbon" panel, define wasting, it's physiological and psychological impact on those of us with HIV, and make medical history as a group are still holding out for the bass ring of "singular fame."
This tragedy is all too common. So the next time you some handsome young and brilliant AIDS researcher and clinician hop into his BMW, pick up his equally hot and handsome boyfriend and head off to a day of spa treatments so they can be pretty for their next high priced Pharma gig you might want to say a little something to them, such as: "Could you please stop being a major dickhead and save my life?"
Or you can just stand in amazement as they check their watch and mutter now they are really going to be late for their teeth whitening appointment just because of you.
Like it or not AIDS is BIG BUSINESS, a BIG GAME played with BIG EGOS (Yes, I will cop to some of it, but nothing compared to what I was once like.) It is time for big mouths with big podiums to stand up and shout big time...Hello NAPWA? Anyone home?
Although I do believe that Dave is looking GREAT! This is something that should not be covered by the already ailing healthcare system.
A breast cancer survivor is just that a survivor - before she put a saline bad to her chest she knows the cancer is gone for a long time and wants to begin to rebuild - she is not living with cancer and planning her "what ifs"