Joyce Turner-Keller will never forget the day she was infected with HIV.
It was 1995 and she woke up at 5 am for an early morning jog around her Picayune, Miss. neighborhood. Turner-Keller, then 45, was a flight attendant and a minister, and that morning her parishioners were coming over for a church service. As she was returning from her jog a man in a police uniform suddenly leaped out from the bushes and pushed her through the doorway of her house.
Once inside, the man, who was white, told Turner-Keller, who is black, that she had stolen her job from a white woman. Then he raped her.
Although Turner-Keller was afraid of reporting the crime to the police, she informed her doctor, but was never given an HIV test.
Six years later, in October 2001, after being in a car accident, she developed a staph infection that spread throughout her entire body. A doctor performed a blood test and discovered Turner-Keller had full blown AIDS.
Turner-Keller didn’t have insurance at the time, but managed to find coverage. That can’t be said for everyone in the US living with HIV/AIDS.
Nationwide, Medicaid and Medicare are the two largest providers of health coverage for HIV/AIDS patients. But under current law, states use different standards to determine eligibility for public assistance, which means HIV/AIDS patients have very different coverage options based on where they live.
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