“This Combo Keeps Me Gay” Say Troye Sivan, But Prep Is Easier For Aussies Than Americans
“This combo keeps me gay.”
With those five words, Troye Sivan, the Australian pop star and actor living in the US, promoted modern safe-sex practices to his 14 million followers.
For in that picture was life-saving preventative medication: PrEP. Many gay men know it’s a game changer. Experts say it reduces the risk of getting HIV from sex about 99 percent of the time when taken daily.
Troye’s single, Bloom, is said to be about bottoming.
If Sivan were in Australia, he’d get the drug heavily subsidised on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme. If you have a Medicare card as of Jan 2023, it costs about $30 a month.
But as Sivan is in the US, he must pay a cost that, to many, is prohibitively expensive. That could be a big reason why usage among American gay men is still only around a third, according to studies. Truvada (the brand name for PrEP) costs $2,000 a month in the US without insurance.
Today, US District Judge Reed O’Connor issued a nationwide injunction striking down a key component of the Affordable Care Act, which could be a roadblock to US gay men accessing PrEP.
In response, Lambda Legal HIV Project Director Jose Abrigo issued the following statement:
“We are dismayed by today’s outrageous ruling… that will put in jeopardy access to coverage of dozens of critical, life-saving preventative health care services, such as PrEP, impacting especially vulnerable populations.”
