Tori Samuel (L) and Michael Emanuel Rajner lead a protest outside the the Historic Florida Capitol on Feb. 18, 2026, to protest the ADAP cuts.(Photo by Christine Sexton/Florida Phoenix)
The House agreed Thursday to give final passage to a Senate proposal to direct nearly $31 million to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program and to stop the DeSantis administration from making further cuts to the initiative that has served more than 32,000 people.
The House voted unanimously for final passage of HB 697, following the Senate’s unanimous vote for the bill on Tuesday night.
In a session marked by fighting and dysfunction, House members lauded legislative leaders for coming together to find a solution that, through June 30, would keep people enrolled in the program that provides them access to the life-saving, costly, drugs that reduce the level of human immunodeficiency virus in the body. When people with HIV reach an undetectable viral load they don’t transmit the virus to others.
“This is when the process works, right? This is the beauty of the process and making sure that our people are taken care of. Because this is not just an issue that is limited to one group of people or one area of people. It is literally an issue that that affects all of us, and if all of us are not well, if all of us are not healthy, then none of us are well and none of us are healthy,” said Rep. Michele Rayner, D-St. Petersburg.
“This is a life-saving program that was hanging in the peril and we are doing something today to make sure that we’re sending a message to the governor, saying that we care about all Florida needs. Regardless of who you love, what you look like, where you live.”
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which sued the DeSantis administration in state administrative court and Leon County Circuit Court to try to halt the cuts, issued a statement following the final House vote.
“No one in the state of Florida should lose access to the medication keeping them alive because of a budget dispute. These are our neighbors. These are people who did everything right. Today, the Legislature stood with them,” Esteban Wood, director of advocacy and legislative affairs for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said in the prepared statement.
Now what?
While all passed bills are eventually sent to the governor, there are different deadlines, set in the Florida Constitution, for gubernatorial action. Gov. Ron DeSantis will have seven days to sign or veto HB 697 if it’s sent to him while the Legislature still is in session. If the bill is sent to the governor after the Legislature adjourns, the governor has 15 days to act.
And if the bill is sent to the governor during the session but the Legislature adjourns before the governor takes action, the seven-day deadline is extended to 15 days.
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House Speaker Daniel Perez had not sent HB 697 to DeSantis Thursday night. The regular 60-day session is scheduled to end Friday.
Tallahassee attorney Eduardo Lombard, an outside lawyer for the Florida Department of Health, said Tuesday that the agency expects DeSantis to sign the legislation. As such, the agency had started to “operationalize” so it could quickly publish a new emergency rule for the program, as required by HB 697.
Thursday’s final House vote brought to an end, for now, a nine-week debate over the DeSantis administration’s move to reduce spending in the program amid a projected $120 million deficit.
Without consulting the Legislature or adopting the prerequisite rules to make any changes, the DOH in January drafted a set of letters that were sent to program clients.
One letter, according to legal documents, advised patients that as of Feb. 28 they no longer would be able to take advantage of the premium assistance and medication support. The letter advised that the state had changed income eligibility, reducing it from 400% of the poverty level to no more than 130%.
The second letter the DOH sent patients notified them that while they still were eligible for benefits they no longer could take the daily pill Biktarvy.
In addition to sending the correspondence, the DOH posted the changes on its website.
The National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors estimated that more than 16,000 patients in Florida would lose coverage because the changes in policy.
While the legal tussles continue, HB 697, if signed into law as the DOH predicts, could bring them to an end. At least temporarily.
The funding in HB 697, as well as the directions to the DOH on how to administer the money, would be in effect only through June 30.
Specifically the bill would redirect the money away from a DOH trust fund toward ADAP. The health department would be required to maintain income eligibility for the program through that date at 400% of the federal poverty level. The bill would direct the state to directly distribute the medications to enrollees. That’s a change from the existing approach in which the state helps people with HIV purchase costly drugs through insurance assistance.
Lastly the bill would require the DOH, which did not advise the Legislature of the funding shortfall prior to the start of the session, to submit detailed monthly reports to House and Senate budget leaders. DOH would be required to include in the reports the the amount of federal revenues and expenditures for the ADAP program, including drug manufacturer rebates; the number of ADAP participants, the counties in which they live, and their health insurance status; and the number and type of prescriptions filled, including use by drug class.
House Health Care Budget Subcommittee Chairman and Pensacola Republican, Rep. Alex Andrade, noted the monthly reporting requirements and underscored the need for the DOH to provide the information.
“If you knew the teeth-pulling process of trying to just get information about simple numbers and people from a state agency to keep a program alive, you would be infuriated,” Andrade said.
The Legislature will have to debate how the program works beyond that when it crafts the state fiscal year 2026-27 budget, which will guide spending from July 1 through June 30, 2027.
Not just a Florida thing
Florida is not alone in struggling with HIV-assistance funding.
The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program is the national safety-net program supporting more than 600,000 low-income people living with HIV across the nation. States receive federal grants and drug rebate money — the latter making up the bulk of state program budgets — to, among other things, help pay for medications and support community groups and specific populations, such as women and children.
Congress has kept key drug assistance funding at $900.3 million annually since 2014. New enrollments for state programs jumped 30% from 2022 to 2024, in part because states cut off pandemic-era Medicaid assistance.
Citing a March 2 analysis conducted by health research group KFF and a report by the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, Stateline reported this week that at least 18 states have reduced their programs, in some way.