Action Report

June 19, 2000

After a year of being stonewalled by Secretary Cuomo in response to repeated requests for a meeting, ADAPT had to go to Cuomo's home to get a written commitment for a firm July 31, 2000 date. 150 members of ADAPT, a national grassroots disability rights organization, occupied Cuomo's front walk and driveway, vowing not to leave until he agreed to meet to discuss the availability of more housing vouchers for persons coming out of nursing homes and institutions. ADAPT also wants to question the Secretary about the current HUD policy of funding nursing homes.

"We went to his home because we wrote letter after letter, and made call after call to Secretary Cuomo, but his office has made continual excuses about a meeting date, and his scheduler has refused us altogether," explained Erik von Schmetterling, ADAPT organizer from Philadelphia. "Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people continue to be warehoused against their will in nursing homes and institutions- the victims of failed public policy on Medicaid. They need to be free, and they need places to live in the community."

At the same time, 350 other ADAPT members were in the heart of Washington at the AMA office on Vermont. ADAPT went to the AMA office because a May 3 letter from ADAPT to AMA Senior Vice President Lee Stillwell had gone unanswered and ignored. In a "Memorandum of Understanding" signed by ADAPT's Linda Anthony of Pennsylvania and Julius W. Hobson, Jr., the AMA Director of the Division of Congressional Affairs, the AMA has agreed to meet with ADAPT on June 27, 2000 to review ADAPT's legislation, the Medicaid Community Attendant Services and Supports Act (MiCASSA), S. 1935, introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and co-sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA).

The memorandum further states that the AMA will meet with ADAPT to discuss AMA's policy regarding nursing home admissions. In particular, ADAPT wants to insure that AMA members, before admitting any individual to a nursing home or other institution, make written assurance that all community based options have been offered to that individual.

"The 300,000 physicians who are AMA members are the gatekeepers of our nation's nursing homes and other institutions," said Anthony, a Pennsylvania ADAPT organizer. " For years they have sent people to nursing homes and institutions based on their ignorance about the day to day lives of people with disabilities, and it is simply way beyond time for that practice to stop."