George W. Bush Highway is a six-lane roadway in Ghana that runs for almost 9 miles. It was named for the American president who made it a priority to dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars to eradicate HIV/AIDS on the African continent and globally. The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, was the lasting legacy of a Republican head of state who visited more African countries than any other American president in history. Another Republican president is now dismantling it.

According to documents obtained by the New York Times, the U.S. State Department has drafted a plan to effectively defund PEPFAR in as little as two years. The plan would eliminate the organization and create “’bilateral relationships’ with low-income countries, focused on the detection of outbreaks that could threaten the United States and the creation of new markets for American drugs and technologies, according to the documents.”

So instead of saving lives with PEPFAR, our government is going to take that life-saving money and put it into the development of more ways for Big Pharma, most likely, to make money abroad. Meanwhile, American patients, many of whom will inevitably lose their Medicaid healthcare in the coming years, may not benefit from the good fortune of companies thriving in new markets. But the billionaires enjoying their additional tax cuts probably will.

This is a narrative for a future scenario that isn’t certain to come to pass, granted. But if past is prologue, cutting off funding for poor people doesn’t usually come back to benefit them in some other way. Hopefully, Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina can change the minds of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the president. The two are said to want to leave the program in place, and they are not alone. Congressional bipartisan support for PEPFAR prevented a $400 million reduction in the organization’s funding last week, when Congress voted to rescinded nearly $8 billion in foreign aid. So, it’s a fingers-crossed situation that may just pan out with sufficient political pressure.

The U.S. government describes PEPFAR as the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease. It has reportedly saved 25 million lives since it’s creation in 2003. More than one million lives per year is an incredibly impressive track record the American government and people should want to embrace. Killing this organization – or even downsizing it – is nonsensical. But these days, nonsensical is often the norm.