On March 30, 2023, a federal district judge in Texas issued an order in Braidwood v. Becerra blocking a long-standing requirement under the Affordable Care Act that all preventive healthcare services given an A or B rating by the United States Preventive Services Task Force, including PrEP—a drug that reduces the risk of HIV transmission by close to 100%—must be covered by health insurance plans without cost sharing.

According to researchers at Yale and Harvard, ending the prohibition of cost sharing for PrEP will increase HIV transmission among men who have sex with men by at least 17% in the first year alone.

The CDC reported in 2019 that only 23% of people eligible for PrEP were prescribed it, and that only 8% of Black people and 14% of Latinx people eligible for PrEP received it compared to 63% of white people.

On June 17, 2023, GLAD and law firm Mintz filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) and the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, urging reversal of the district court order.

HIVMA and NASTAD represent thousands of healthcare providers, public officials, and policy experts with expertise in the treatment and prevention of HIV and the demographics and dynamics of the epidemic. In the brief, the experts warn that allowing the order to stand will exacerbate racial health disparities, increase new HIV diagnoses by the tens of thousands, and have devastating consequences on our efforts to end the epidemic. Learn more.