ADAPT gathers in San Francisco

Tennessee ADAPT, like ADAPT chapters from all over the country, has been working for months to raise the money for this action in San Francisco. Motivated, in part, by the common desire to bring choice to the nation's long-term care system and in part, by disbelief that the same community that sparked the Independent Living movement would be so regressive as to rebuild Laguna Honda.

San Francisco is planning to rebuild the Laguna Honda 1200 bed institution rather than expand home and community based alternatives that would allow people a choice. No one wants to live in a nursing home. In Tennessee and across the nation, Americans have found that institutions are the least desirable and most expensive form of long-term care.

Hundreds of ADAPT advocates are gathering in San Francisco today because Americans deserve choice. People must have options, and not be forced because of a mental or physical disability, to live in an institution.

The advocates from across the nation came together at the Ramada Plaza Hotel at 8th and Market Street. ADAPT is likely the most diverse group ever created. Most people notice the large number of wheelchair users in ADAPT, but ADAPT represents a broad spectrum of disabilities, as well as, diversity in race, creed, gender income and family status. ADAPT is a varied yet highly organized family.

The last time national ADAPT was in San Francisco it was to demand accessible public transportation. While you may think that public transit and long-term care are wildly different issues, they really are acutely similar. Excluding Americans with disabilities from the public transit system was a very obvious way of isolating and ignoring a large segment of the community. 

Michael Heinrich, traveling today from Memphis, was at that ADAPT action here in the late 1980's. ADAPT was working at the time to force the bus industry's lobby to ensure accessible buses. "There was this regalia with people arriving wearing tuxedos and fine gowns," said Michael, "they had to crawl over people in wheelchairs to get in."

Now ADAPT is in the Bay Area again to stop the isolation of people with disabilities in the monolithic institution Laguna Honda and for California to stop ignoring American's Constitutional right to integration.

Olmstead, the U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1998, declared an individual's right to live in the community. It prohibited states from unnecessary institutionalization and affirmed the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act mandate to provide services, like those provided in nursing homes and other institutions, in the most integrated setting.

Rebuilding Laguna Honda, no matter how dissimilar they intend the new institution to become, is not following the direction provided by Olmstead. ADAPT is in San Francisco to say THERE IS A BETTER WAY.

ADAPT is not simply pointing out problems in the nations long-term care system. ADAPT supports national legislation that will address this problem and bring choice to the fractured and outdated Medicaid system.

Senator Tom Harkin, to reform Medicaid, introduced MiCASSA, the Medicaid Community Attendants Services and Supports Act. Across the country 73% of the Medicaid funding is spent on institutions, despite the fact that people overwhelmingly prefer to live in their own homes. Thirty eight percent of San Francisco's Long-Term Care Budget provides community-based services to more than 122,337 people a year; however, Laguna Honda devours 62% of the budget to serve approximately 1000 residents. 

THERE IS A BETTER WAY.

- Tim Wheat