AIDS programs get almost $2.1 billion, 1.2% over the previous year.

Not all AIDS programs, for example, have the same medical team follow the patient.

The city said it was spending $100 million on AIDS programs this year.

"We have lost financial resources and field investigators to the AIDS program over the last four years."

More than $4 million had been earmarked for AIDS programs.

That accounts for 28 percent of what the government spends on the AIDS program in a year.

"There must be many more whom we don't know about," an official handling the AIDS program said.

One question, however, is how the specialized AIDS programs would fare under a national health care system.

As a result, many AIDS programs have greatly reduced the scale of their activities in recent months.

Washington is the single largest financier of AIDS programs in poor countries.