Tuesday we learned that the program that helps people living with HIV/AIDS stay alive is not accepting any new patients. Enrollment is capped even though more people than ever are trying to access the program that provides lifesaving drugs that cost $13,000 a year, far out of the reach of many people infected with HIV.

The News and Observer reports that the budget passed last year included $11 million for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), roughly half the usual appropriation.

Last week, we learned from Health and Human Services Secretary Lanier Cansler that state Medicaid spending is running well above projections and could end the year costing $250 million more than the budget provided.

Much of the shortfall comes from enrollment increases even larger than the increase lawmakers expected. Unemployment remains at record highs. More people in the state are struggling and qualify for Medicaid coverage. 

Cansler told lawmakers that the state may have to stop covering some services to reduce costs, services like hospice care, transplants, and respiratory care for children.

Any reductions made to respond to the Medicaid shortfall will be in addition to the $1.4 billion in cuts made in the health and human services budget approved by the General Assembly last summer.

The news about ADAP and Medicaid comes on the heels of months of stories about the damage the budget cuts have done to people with a mental illness, developmental disability, or addiction.  The stories chronicle the cuts statewide and in local communities, like the $900,000 reduction in a program in Western North Carolina that provides services to adults with developmental disabilities.

Denying lifesaving drugs, cutting off help for children who have trouble breathing, ignoring the needs of adults with cerebral palsy, that’s what things have come to in North Carolina. 

People with a life-threatening illness or disability weren’t faring all that well before the bottom fell out of the economy and now they are bearing the brunt of the havoc the recession has wreaked on the state budget.  But they are also suffering because of our willingness to let them suffer.

We are often told that everyone has to sacrifice when times are tough and the budget cuts last summer reflect that sentiment. But some people in North Carolina cannot sacrifice any more. 

Denying access to life-saving drugs to someone with HIV does not require their sacrifice. It threatens their life.

Refusing to help a child breathe better is not a sacrifice any child should have to make. And asking someone living with a developmental disability to tough it out on their own for a couple of years should not be a state policy ever —budget crisis or not.

Even with the Medicaid shortfall and state revenues coming in slower than projected, the conventional wisdom in Raleigh still insists that lawmakers will be able to somehow get by this summer without making another round of major cuts and certainly without finding new revenues. 

That appears to be the view of legislative leaders and Governor Beverly Perdue, who all cite the state’s savings account as one way to plug any budget hole that develops in the spring.

It’s almost taken as good news, that we can make it through this year without more massive cuts. There’s an election in November after all.

But it’s hardly good news if you are infected with HIV or have a child that can’t breathe the way she should. 

The suffering in North Carolina grows and the sacrifices of those with nothing to sacrifice continue, while the rest of us of talk about getting by. And it is our shame.