May 15, 2001
For more information, contact:
Bob Kafka (512) 442-0252
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ADAPT Scores 2 Victories to Free People from Institutions

(WASHINGTON DC) 500 members of ADAPT, in Washington, D.C. this week to get President George W. Bush to keep a promise, won a double-header on their first day out in the streets. ADAPT began with a written commitment for a meeting with Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, to discuss Medicaid and Medicare budget items related to the promised Executive Order from President Bush. Having gained the meeting with Thompson, ADAPT moved to the offices of the American Health Care Association (AHCA) and won a meeting with President and CEO, Dr. Chip Roadman, to work on notifying nursing home residents of their rights. 

Thompson confirmed his meeting with ADAPT from Geneva, Switzerland, while 500 ADAPT activists surrounded and closed off the HHS headquarters in the Hubert H. Humphrey Building. The protest resulted when HHS senior staff failed to commit in writing to the Thompson meeting while negotiating with 20 people from 18 states invited to meet with HHS staff while ADAPT was in Washington this week.

"The invitation they sent us said we would schedule the meeting with Sec. Thompson," said Steve Verriden, ADAPT Organizer from Thompson's home state of Wisconsin, "and then we got stonewalled. Seven of the twenty of us were formerly warehoused in nursing homes because of the institutional bias in Medicaid-they took that stonewalling very personally, and so did the other 500 ADAPT members outside who then closed off the building for several hours until Sec. Thompson agreed to meet."

The Olmstead decision, in which the Supreme Court decreed states couldn't discriminate against persons with disabilities by keeping them segregated in nursing homes and other institutions instead of providing services in their own homes, was the theme of the day's second protest at the AHCA building.

ADAPT wants AHCA, the nursing home owners' professional organization, to fund an ADAPT-written Notification of Your Rights Under Olmstead to be distributed to nursing home and other institutional residents across the country. Preliminary discussion on the rights brochure will begin at the meeting with Roadman, negotiated by two ADAPT representatives while the other 500 sealed off the AHCA building for two hours.

"All of our targets this week are related to getting President Bush to be a man of his word and issue the Executive Order he promised over three months ago urging states to swiftly implement Olmstead," said Shona Eakin, an ADAPT Organizer from Pennsylvania. "That order will need funding to assist the states, and the people who can benefit from it need to know their rights. You know, if you ask ADAPT about the President's first 100 days, we'd have to give him an "F" for excessive tardiness, and not completing assignments. And when that tardiness and not following through keeps our people imprisoned in institutions, ADAPT will not remain silent." 

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