TY - JOUR AU - Goldman,Dana AU - Lakdawalla,Darius AU - Sood,Neeraj TI - HIV Breakthroughs and Risk Sexual Behavior JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 10516 PY - 2004 Y2 - May 2004 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10516 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10516.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Dana Goldman Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics University of Southern California 3335 S. Figueroa St, Unit A Los Angeles, CA 90089-7273 Tel: (213) 821-7948 Fax: (213) 740-3460 E-Mail: dana.goldman@usc.edu Darius N. Lakdawalla Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics University of Southern California 3335 S. Figueroa St, Unit A Los Angeles, CA 90089-7273 Los Angeles, CA 90 Tel: 213/740-6012 E-Mail: dlakdawa@healthpolicy.usc.edu Neeraj Sood Department of Clinical Pharmacy USC School of Pharmacy 1985 Zonal Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90033 Tel: 310/393-0411 Fax: 310/260-8156 E-Mail: nsood@usc.edu AB - Recent breakthroughs in the treatment of HIV have coincided with an increase in infection rates and an eventual slowing of reductions in HIV mortality. These trends may be causally related, if treatment improves the health and functional status of HIV+ individuals and allows them to engage in more sexual risk-taking. We examine this hypothesis empirically using access to health insurance as an instrument for treatment status. We find that treatment results in more sexual risk-taking by HIV+ adults, and possibly more of other risky behaviors like drug abuse. This relationship implies that breakthroughs in treating an incurable disease like HIV can increase precautionary behavior by the uninfected and thus reduce welfare. We also show that, in the presence of this effect, treatment and prevention are social complements for incurable diseases, even though they are substitutes for curable ones. Finally, there is less under-provision of treatment for an incurable disease than a curable one, because of the negative externalities associated with treating an incurable disease. ER -