Expenditures for the Care of HIV-Infected Patients in the Era of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy

The introduction of highly active combination antiretroviral therapy has been accompanied by increased concern about the costs of care for patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. 1 – 7 Some investigators have reported an association between use of highly active antiretroviral therapy and reductions in overall health care costs. 8 , 9 However, the available data are from short-term studies that involved nonrepresentative samples, that were based at major academic centers, or that did not examine differences in expenditures among subgroups of patients. To provide a better basis for clinical and policy debates, we analyzed expenditures for a nationally representative sample of HIV-infected . . .