Welcome to ADAPT!

ADAPT is a national grass-roots community that organizes disability rights activists to engage in nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience, to assure the civil and human rights of people with disabilities to live in freedom.

Next National Action: April 21-26, 2012

ADAPT will be in Washington DC to fight the institutional bias and advocate to Defend Our Freedom! Stay tuned for updates closer to the date.

Also, check out our last action at ADAPT Action Report. ADAPT fought to ensure that the US Congress Super Committee did not make arbitrary cuts to Medicaid while developing a ten-year budget plan for the United States. See ADAPT's Medicaid Savings Proposals.

Aljazeera Opinion Article on Medicaid Rally

Community First Choice Option

As of October 1, 2011, states were eligible to select the Community First Choice Option. Several states have already indicated that they will be selecting the option. California has formed a CFC Development and Implementation Council and has an aggressive timeline for CFC Implementation. New York has announced that it will be selecting the option. Maryland has confirmed that the state will select the option. Alaska, Rhode Island and Washington all indicated in a Families USA survey that they would be selecting the CFC Option in the coming year. In the same survey, Arizona has indicated that the state is considering selecting the option.

Although CMS has not released the final rules, we understand that they should be released soon. Whether your state is moving forward with the CFC Option or you are advocating that they do, ADAPT's Community First Choice Option Fact Sheet explains the basics for you. We have also developed Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about CFC as well as a sample letter you can edit to send to your State Medicaid Director to ask for a meeting about your state selecting the CFC Option.

Managed Care

The expansion of Medicaid managed care that includes long term services and supports for people with disabilities and older people confronts us with the challenge of how to assure that the advances we have made in developing a person centered, consumer directed, community based system is not diminished or eliminated. Managed care has some positive opportunities as well as potential for negative outcomes.

States are developing Requests for Proposals that HMOs must respond to. The HMOs selected to administer the program then must sign a contract with the state that outlines what they must provide, how it is delivered, how the state will evaluate their performance and how the HMOs will be reimbursed. Advocates should be at the table telling the state what “best practices” to put in the RFP. In addition there must be some accountability in the managed care contract to assure that community integration is the outcome we want.

Two resources for advocates at the state level are Guiding Principles for Serving Individuals with Disabilities through Medicaid Health Plans that National ADAPT negotiated with the American Health Insurance Programs (AHIP)in 2007 and proposed Community Integration Performance Indicators (CIPI) that ADAPT of Texas has recently developed to assess how their managed care program in Texas (StarPlus) is doing in providing LTSS.

Fun Run for Disability Rights

ADAPT's Fun Run for Disability Rights will be held on Sunday, April 22, 2012 in Upper Senate Park. So grab your wheels, your bike, your dog, your kid or your skates. But most important sign up your sponsors to support Disability Rights while you run with ADAPT. This is not a race. You run, walk or roll around a quarter-mile track for an hour and count your laps. We do the rest. We provide T-shirts, food, drinks and lots of music for sponsored participants!

ADAPT is honored to announce that Noah Wyle, best-known for playing Dr. John Carter on television's "ER" and currently starring in "Falling Skies," will join us at the ADAPT 7th Annual FUN RUN for Disability Rights as our 2012 "Celebrity Fun Runner".

All proceeds go to support disability rights.

Other organizations that support disability rights are welcome to participate in ADAPT's Fun Run and raise their own funds too!

For more information Fun Run Announcements or visit the Fun Run Website

Check out the September 21, 2011 National My Medicaid Matters Rally

ADAPT and over 90 disability, aging and civil rights groups sponsored the historic My Medicaid Matters rally, the biggest gathering of disability advocates in the nation's capital since the ADA signing.More Rally Information.

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