Yesterday, we wrote that California State Controller John Chiang sent a letter to Gilead Sciences to ask the drugmaker for a reduction in the price of Atripla, a key AIDS med. As it turns out, Chiang actually sent letters to a total of nine drugmakers, asking each of them to lower the prices on their AIDS meds and also extend supplemental agreements that were reached last year to relieve financial pressure on the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs around the country.

The other drugmakers he wrote were Abbott Laboratories, Merck, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Johnson & Johnson’s Tibotec unit and ViiV Healthcare, a joint venture between Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline.

In each case, Chiang wrote that California’s ADAP program has experienced a 257 percent increase in AIDS drug spending since 2000, more than three times the rate of client growth over this same period. The state is “faced with either racheting down access to ADAP or cutting other vital health services to offset the cost of ADAP,” he wrote the drugmakers, adding that supplemental agreements with several drugmakers expire this year, contributing to the financial pressures on the states.

“These increases not only put an undue burden on people seeking treatment, but place an unsustainable burden on states. California cannot afford to increase the budget for ADAP indefinitely in order to pay for higher drug prices. Nor can the state be put in the position of denying other essential health services in order to pay increasing drug costs. This tension must be resolved and in a manner that first serves Californians in need of health care, “he continued. “I urge you to extend the supplemental agreement you already have in place with the state and provide additional pricing considerations that will translate into a cost savings for the program. Only by a shared responsibility to sustain this program can we ensure ADAP will serve all of the people who rely on it.”

And as he did last year in a letter to Bristol-Myers Squibb, which was locked in a battle over the pricing of its Reyataz AIDS drug, Chiang was not shy about noting that he is a board member of both the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which are two of the largest public pension funds and also “substantial shareholders” in the various drugmakers.

As of last night, though, only Gilead had responded to Chiang, by agreeing to schedule a meeting.