This World AIDS Day, it is encouraging to hear international agencies speak of a foreseeable "end to AIDS" -- but in reality, achieving this goal is impossible without a renewed emphasis on human rights and without a major increase in resources.

Internationally, as in Canada, new infections continue to occur, often fuelled by stigma, discrimination and misguided policies undermining HIV prevention efforts.

Meanwhile, an unconscionable gap still separates as many as 22 million people around the world from accessing the treatment they desperately need. Thanks to three decades of scientific research and frontline experience, we know what programs and services are needed and effective. 

Robert Parry in In These Times examines how Paul Ryan's budget test would turn health care for the elderly into one big free-market death panel.

Ryan's plan privatizes Medicare, replacing it with premium support for insurance companies. That means the government would kick in a fixed amount of money towards insurance premiums for Americans over age 65. Ryan also wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which requires insurers to cover people with preexisting conditions. Ryan's plan doesn't guarantee that Americans over 65 could get insurance in the first place. Even if they could find an insurer willing to take them, there is no reason to believe that premium support would cover more than part of the cost.