State Rep. Betty Price says comments about quarantining HIV patients 'taken out of context'

GEORGIA — A Roswell lawmaker now says she does not support quarantining HIV patients after she seemed to ask if it was legal to do so during a House study committee meeting last week.
 
"I do not support a quarantine in this public health challenge and dilemma of undertreated HIV patients," State Rep. Betty Price (R-Roswell) wrote in a statement.

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Price, the wife of former Health and Human Services secretary and Georgia congressman Tom Price, was at a meeting of a House study committee last week when she asked a state health official about HIV patients.
 
"What are we legally able to do?" Price asked during the meeting.  "I don't want to say the quarantine word, but I guess I just said it.  Is there an ability since, I would guess that public dollars are expended heavily in prophylaxes and treatment of this condition.  So we have a public interest in curtailing the spread.  What would you advise?  Or are there any methods, you know, that we could do that would curtail the spread?"
 
Price said in the statement that her comments were "provocative  and rhetorical" and "part of a free-flowing conversation which has been taken completely out of context."
 
Metro Atlanta's LGBTQ community was quick to condemn the original statements
 
"The comments from Rep. Price were incredibly disturbing," said Georgia Equality Executive Director Jeff Graham.  "In this day and age to be even mentioning quarantine around people living with HIV, there just really is no excuse for it.  I was heartened to see that she made some recognition of this with the statement that she made over the weekend.  I think that is a good start, but clearly, we need to go further than that."

Cox Media Group