Myers further commented that it seemed DHCS felt the law was not going to help too many people, and as a busy overworked and understaffed bureaucracy, certain things would get short-shrift. "However, "as Michael said, when it comes to the law, it cannot pick and choose which laws which laws DHCS will comply with and which ones it will not. The legislature stated its intention, the Governor agreed to it, it's up to the department to do it."

Weinstein then stated that he felt DHCS is "incompetent, indifferent, not accountable. In many, many of our dealings with private health care services, if it isn't their idea they simply refuse to do it... I predict they will continue to be slow even in enforcing this writ, and it will probably be necessary to go back to court and ask the court to hold them in contempt." Prior to this decision, Weinstein says, AHF offered to settle the case if DHCS would just implement the law "but they turned a deaf ear." Myers added, "The important thing is we have a clear decision by the judge that certain very clear laws have not been complied with and that is what we are going to be focused on right now."


In a broader context, Weinstein explained, the numbers of new cases of HIV are 40% higher than previously thought in the last twelve years. In California specifically, he said, there are probably 30 thousand plus individuals who are HIV positive and do not know it, and more who are positive but in regular care. "The response to AIDS in California is bad. We applaud the governor's leadership in many of these areas but he's not getting the service from his departments that is required. There is a lot of complacency about the issue; it's been around for awhile and people are not treating it with urgency. In the long run the response to AIDS in California is going to cost the state much more money...There are other places in the country where there are much better efforts to combat AIDS, and in California, a progressive state and a bellweather in many other areas, this is extremely disappointing."

DOTmed News asked the AHF's representatives how they were originally involved in the legislation. Weinstein explained, "In our clinic, and we have 12 clinics in California, we do financial screening on these approximately 6,000 patients. So we know the financial status of every one of them and what happens to our patients. Many of these clinics are on the campuses of hospitals. And for the indigent patients who are not Medi-Cal eligible, they cannot be admitted to those hospitals and they cannot get specialty referrals in many instances. So as we're trying to organize their care, it's very heartbreaking to not be able to give them the care that they need. So we devised a method whereby people could be covered without any additional expense to the state. We sponsored a bill, got it passed, got it signed, we went to endless meetings with the Department of Health Care Services to get it implemented, and now all these years later these people have been diagnosed with HIV, progressed to AIDS and dying during the time the Department of Health Care Services has not enforced this law." As a provider to and representative of patients, Weinstein said, "We brought this suit to enforce the law we had originally sponsored."

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