Congressmen, citing reports of fraud, seek accounting for AIDS funding

"Two Republican congressmen who help oversee billions of dollars for people with AIDS are asking the federal government for an accounting of fraud and mismanagement complaints leveled against AIDS programs nationwide," The Washington Post reports. "Reps. Joe L. Barton (Tex.) and Greg Walden (Ore.) sent a letter Thursday to the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration that raised questions about the agency's oversight of AIDS programs." A recent  Washington Post series was cited in the letter. It found "the D.C. Department of Health had awarded more than $25 million, largely in federal funds, to AIDS nonprofit groups that delivered substandard services or failed to account for any work at all. ... The lawmakers' probe focuses on federal funding provided under the Ryan White Act, which pays for medical care and support services for about 500,000 low-income people each year" (Cenziper, 2/5).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.