October 24, 2001
For more information, contact:
Bob Kafka (512) 431-4085 cell
Marsha Katz (406) 544-9504 cell

ADAPT MEETS WITH HHS OFFICIALS TO DEMAND S.F. OLMSTEAD COMPLIANCE

(SAN FRANCISCO) When San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown refused to even talk about community alternatives to rebuilding city owned Laguna Honda Hospital, the national disability rights group ADAPT went over his head, and forced a meeting with the highest ranking regional representative of Department of Health and Human services to discuss discontinuing Medicaid reimbursement for the facility's illegal 30 bed wards. 

"Now I understand why people around here call the Mayor 'Slick Willie", said Steve Verriden ADAPT Organizer from Wisconsin. "His arrogant manner and disregard for us said loud and clear that he had no intention of seriously discussing the issues, and really set the tone for the battle ahead. As a person with a disability himself, we had hoped he would be more knowledgeable about community alternatives to warehousing people with disabilities and seniors, but he made it clear that his only worry is for his own future political contributions, not for the futures of the 1000 people locked up in Laguna Honda." 

Not to end the week on a down note, 500 ADAPT activists marched over to the United Nations Plaza Federal Building, blockading it until a meeting was arranged with Josh Valdez, DBA, the HHS Secretary's Regional Representative for Region IX, and Steven Derring, the Region IX Deputy Director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Valdez and Derring not only agreed to meet and discuss ADAPT's Civil Rights complaints against Laguna Honda, but to set a second meeting in two weeks to continue the dialog. 

Earlier this fall ADAPT filed the complaints with the HHS Office of Civil Rights based on the expenditure of state and federal Medicaid funds on forced institutionalization of persons with disabilities in an outrageously out of compliance structure, violating both the ADA and the U.S. Supreme Court Olmstead decision.

"While we marched through the streets this week, we passed out flyers and we talked to a lot of local citizens," said Lou Ann Kibbee ADAPT Organizer from rural Kansas. "It was very apparent that when the bond issue to rebuild 
Laguna Honda was on the ballot last year, voters had not been given any information on community alternatives, or even that there was an alternative to Laguna Honda. They kept thanking us for coming to San Francisco because now they saw that their votes were essentially manipulated by a special interest campaign of misinformation."

The meeting with Valdez and Derring ended a week of ADAPT protests aimed at stopping the rebuilding of Laguna Honda so funds can be redirected to community services for older and disabled San Franciscans. While traffic around the Civic Center may get back to normal with ADAPT's departure, ADAPT committed to support the California disability community by continuing the fight for community services at the federal level. Federal strategies include pursuing the Civil Rights complaints and demanding that administration officials enforce President Bush's Executive Order. The order mandates that people locked away in places like Laguna Honda must be given a choice in where they receive their long term care services by immediately implementing the "Olmstead" decision, which prohibits discrimination by unnecessary institutionalization. 

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