HIV tests may soon be added to routine health checkups

A federal task force is expected to recommend that HIV testing be conducted by doctors during routine checkups, a move which HIV advocates say would represent a "sea change" in the way the virus is detected and treated. The federal health care law passed in 2010 requires insurers to cover recommendations made by the task force. 

"For years this was considered a gay disease so doctors did not get into the habit of talking about HIV or thinking that their patients might have HIV because they may not have had gay patients, or they might not have known they have gay patients," said Lisa Fitzpatrick, head of the United Medical Center, an HIV clinic in Washington, D.C.