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(WASHINGTON DC) Angered by a President who promised freedom from institutions, then cut the funding needed to achieve that freedom, 500 ADAPT activists and allies are marching to the White House to protest President George W. Bush’s FY 2004 and 2005 Medicaid budgets. The “No More Stolen Lives” march is scheduled to reach the White House at sundown on Sunday March 21, and will be followed by a vigil for all the people currently confined in nursing homes and other institutions by administration cuts and the institutionally biased Medicaid policy. Marchers are also calling for a meeting with the President, who has never met with members of the disability community.
“Disability issues are not partisan. Four years ago when President Bush issued his New Freedom Initiative, and his Executive Order mandating implementation of the US Supreme Court Olmstead decision, we believed him, “said Steve Verriden, Wisconsin ADAPT Organizer. “But here we are four years later, facing the worst Medicaid cuts in history, which will without a doubt keep people illegally confined in nursing homes and other institutions, and force even more people into those settings. This loss of personal freedom, and all the President’s empty promises are unconscionable because they mean more stolen lives”
President Bush’s New Freedom Initiative clearly articulated that people with disabilities have the right to access all parts of their community and the American way of life. It directed all federal departments to assess and plan removal of barriers that prevent the disabled from having that access.
The Olmstead Executive Order promised older and disabled Americans home and community based services and supports, instead of the forced institutionalization that results from the institutional bias in the nation’s Medicaid program. States must pay for nursing home services, but are not required to pay for the same services in a person’s own home and community.
“The President’s rhetoric in his New Freedom Initiative and his Olmstead Executive Order sounds like the typical self-serving, empty political promise in light of his promotion of caps and cuts in Medicaid,” said Bob Liston, Montana ADAPT Organizer.
As fiscally beleaguered states continue to cut optional Medicaid services, like limited in-home care programs that some of the states provide, the result will be more people having no choice other than the nursing homes that are mandated by Medicaid. Even if currently proposed legislation that would allow people choice in where they receive long term care services and supports is passed, the administration’s budget proposals would effectively render the gains from that legislation moot.
The legislative measures, all with significant bi-partisan support, and support from over 700 national, state and local organizations, include MiCASSA, the Medicaid Community-based Attendant Services and Supports Act (S. 971; H.R. 2032), and The Money Follows the Person Act (S.1394). Both measures counter the current Medicaid institutional bias by providing people with disabilities, old and young, with the choice to receive their long term care services and supports in their own homes and communities, near friends and loved ones.
“The people leading our march will be people who have had years of their lives stolen by the Medicaid institutional bias," said Cassie Jones, Philadelphia ADAPT Organizer. “We want the President to hear loud and clear that we are tired of having to wait for our freedom, and we demand an end to the institutional bias. We want No More Stolen Lives!”
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