Hi folks! I'm Will and I'll be leading on this petition! Let me tell you a bit about why I'm so passionate about PrEP availability & why I'm dedicated to making sure PrEP is a free part of preventative care. In 1981 many of my friends started dying. They were mostly young men and we didn't know why. I survived that decade & the "AIDS Crisis." I tended to sick friends, went to endless funerals, protected myself through "safer sex" practices. I lost more friends to complications from HIV/AIDS than I can count... and I am myself HIV positive. I contracted HIV in 1991, 6 months before I met my future husband & the love of my life (condoms aren't perfect). When Mark & I got tested (he negative & me positive), we thought I would die like many of our friends. But Mark stayed with me, he took the risk. We've been together 27 years. By 1996, a cocktail of drugs had been developed that could suppress the HIV virus and repeal the death sentence of HIV infection. I started those drugs that year and today my virus is undetectable. I have a life I never dreamed I would have. But now-- almost 40 years after "the crisis," many of our younger brothers & sisters are contracting HIV,  getting sick & dying in the US. In fact the rate of seroconversion has risen, especially among economically & racially disenfranchised youths & women. One of the drugs I currently take actually PREVENTS TRANSMISSION OF THE VIRUS. I wouldn't have seroconverted if I were on Truvada in 1991. It hasn't been easy living with HIV, and I'm one of the lucky survivors who is healthy, for whom the "cocktail" works & side effects are minimal. No one should have to go through HIV disease when the tools for prevention exist. Please sign this petition in memory of all those we lost, all those beautiful men & women who weren't as lucky as me. For our friends who didn't have ANY treatment in the 1980's, but were responsible for the discovery of a treatment & now, a viable prevention.