Major Insurer Lifts Limits On HIV/AIDS Coverage

Sharon Mitchell

OMAHA, Neb. - As of May 1, there'll be no more coverage cap for HIV and AIDS-related illnesses if you hold medical insurance through Mutual of Omaha. This, following lawsuits filed by two Chicago men infected with HIV. And Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation director Sharon Mitchell could barely contain her glee when told the news.

"Oh, my fucking God!" she hollered happily when reached by AVN On The Net. "That's the - that's good! And I'll tell you why it makes sense - the amount of people getting HIV isn't going down, but the number of people living longer with HIV is going up. So what's happening now is, people will be able to continue with their medications or chosen forms of treatment for HIV-related illnesses and be covered and go on with normal life."

The Chicago patients sued on the grounds that the coverage cap violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, with one of the men holding a policy covering $25,000 for AIDS-related ailments against $1 million for other illnesses. It's a case the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn't hear this year, thus letting stand a lower court ruling that allowed the Mutual of Omaha limits.

The insurance giant says it lifted the limits based on learning more about AIDS-related illnesses, but the company wouldn't elaborate when asked by the Associated Press, saying only it was reviewing the limits already when the suit was filed in 1998.

"I only hope it means it will begin to take some of the shame out of the [insurance] game for HIV and HIV-infected people," Mitchell continued about the Mutual decision. "All of this has to come out. If they recognize it as a no-cap (condition), we're talking the same as cancer and everything else - normal medical-treatment-life.

"Oh, God, that's excellent, that's excellent," she enthused onward. "I'm overjoyed about that."

But Mitchell tempered her glee with one corollary concern - HIV patients who had also been substance abusers, whether or not the substance abuse brought the HIV virus to them.

"We have a lot of HIV-positive clients in our drug and alcohol counseling groups," she said, "and chemical dependency in an HIV-infected person, hopefully, will be given attention and not seen as a separate matter. More often than not, if an HIV patient was an addict, they might go back to chemical dependency; maybe they think there's nothing else to lose. Hopefully this will make room for more chemical dependency purposes (in coverage)."