Press Release: ADAPT to Storm Washington, DC

For immediate release

Contact:

Mike Oxford, (785) 224-3865

Bruce Darling, (585) 370-6690

www.adapt.org

ADAPT Activists to Storm Washington DC; Vow to Fight State Cuts to Medicaid Home Services

Fighting dangerous state Medicaid budget cuts across the country, the national grassroots disability rights action group ADAPT is planning direct actions at several venues in Washington, DC between September 19 to 22 to demand that states save Medicaid-funded home and community based services. These services support low income people with disabilities and who are aging to stay in their own homes instead of being forced into nursing facilities to obtain services. During this critical election season, ADAPT plans to make it clear that saving Medicaid services is key to winning the disability vote.

"During this time of fiscal panic, governors are looking for ways to save dollars," notes Mike Ervin of Chicago ADAPT. "Hundreds of us are coming to Washington because Congress and the White House need to step up efforts to protect Medicaid community services in the states. I use home services and without someone to assist me, I'd be waiting on some nursing home aide to change me or feed me whenever she was done with the other fifty people living in the same facility. With home services, I am in charge of my life."

Current Medicaid law mandates that states use their Medicaid programs to pay for nursing homes, but the law does not equally mandate that states pay for the same services in a person's own home. Today, most states recognize that providing home and community based services (HCBS) is a less expensive solution than institutions. However, in these tight fiscal times, Medicaid dollars funding "optional" services like HCBS are first on the budget chopping block, while the mandatory institutional budgets are rarely touched. ADAPT's current "Defending Our Freedom" campaign is a direct response to states' attacks against HCBS, services that allow people with disabilities to take care of themselves, raise their families and be part of society.

"Without the home services funded by Medicaid, hundreds, if not thousands, of people with disabilities in my state would be forced to live in nursing homes or institutions," said Joe Stramondo of Michigan ADAPT. "Some states are virtually on the edge of bankruptcy. It makes no sense to spend extra dollars on institutions when those same dollars could fund more people with disabilities to live in the communities of our choice."

To learn more about Defending Our Freedom, please visit http://www.adapt.org/adapt-campaign.php.

Illinois Battles Managed Care Situation

Illinois lawmakers want to introduce managed care as a cost savings solution. Disability advocates are up in arms. Check out this blog post by Springfield advocate Tyler McHaley:

...The impetus behind this entire post, though, was Access Living's March 19 public forum on managed care, entitled "Managed Care, Managed Lives." Jennifer Thomas, the Personal Assistant Coordinator for Access, put together the event and did a masterful job. She and Tom Wilson, Access' Personal Assistant and Health Care Reform Team Leader, facilitated the forum as well as discussions on a myriad of topics, including the Division of Rehabilitation Services' Home Services Program (HSP), education, the managed care pilot program developed by the Department of Health Care and Family Services (HFS), and the Governor's proposed state budget in its totality.

There was a good crowd of, approximately, 50 people there to take part in the forum. Many who came to the meeting knew the state had many problems with its budget and its ability to manage money, but I suspect they did not realize how deeply the roots of those problems burrowed their way into every layer of the state's fiscal foundation, especially relating to social services. The job of those of us addressing the group that day was to inform and educate grassroots advocates about the problems facing those services particularly geared toward people with disabilities. This was not an easy task, as this is a difficult topic to discuss with people charged to implement policies with which we disagree. If those familiar with the problems as well as the proposed solutions have trouble giving informed answers to relatively simple questions, how is the average citizen supposed to understand all the nuances of pension reform, surcharge taxes for education only, and cuts to social service programs, which are cleverly disguised as "savings?"

For more, see: http://imnotsaying-imjustsaying-cowboy1369.blogspot.com/2010/03/question-and-answer-period.html

Illinois Cuts $90 Million in Community Services and Supports for Mental Health

March 27, 2010

BY MONIFA THOMAS Staff Reporter mjthomas@suntimes.com

About 70,000 adults and children in Illinois would lose access to state-funded mental health services and another 4,000 would be displaced from community-based housing under Gov. Quinn's proposed budget, advocates for the mentally ill warned Friday.

More than $90 million in proposed cuts to the Department of Human Services would also leave the state without the infrastructure needed to start moving psychiatric patients from nursing homes to community housing, as agreed to in a recent legal settlement, mental health advocates say.

For more, see http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/health/2125775,CST-NWS-mental27x.article.

Illinois Budget Crisis Forces Jails to Serve as Mental Health Facilities

Budget crisis keeps inmates from needed mental help

By Edith Brady-Lunny
Posted: Friday, March 5, 2010 7:00 am

BLOOMINGTON -- A 20-year-old man was deemed unfit to stand trial on aggravated battery charges on Jan. 22, a finding that should have triggered his transfer to Springfield's McFarland Mental Health Center for services that would restore him to fitness.

But he and three other inmates found similarly unfit remain in the McLean County jail, the victims of a state budget crisis that has reduced services at the state mental health facility.

McLean County Sheriff Mike Emery said the four men are among a dozen inmates currently requiring special housing arrangements due to mental health issues. The jail, said Emery, "is serving as a small mental health clinic."

For more, see http://pantagraph.com/news/local/article_1f890dc4-2809-11df-b2f3-001cc4c03286.html.

State Budget Cuts and How They Lead to Managed Care: Update from Illinois

An update on the managed care struggle in Illinois, from advocate Tyler McHaley:

Kill Bill, Vol. III

An interesting thing happened on the way to the Medicaid Reform Committee hearing yesterday. I was prepared to testify on behalf of HB 5113, a bill sponsored by Representative Mary Flowers, which would prohibit any state agency, including HFS, DHS, and the Department of Aging from using managed care providers or HMOs to pay for medical care for people receiving Social Security or benefits under other federal waivers. That may sound complicated, but it really is intended to kill the entire managed care pilot project proposed recently by HFS.

It was only after I realized I was at the wrong hearing room that I ran into Representative Chapa LaVIa. It was a fortuitous meeting, as she then told me the current state of her bill, HB 5086, which was heard in the Medicaid Reform Committee last week. Though it passed with only the requirement of some amendments being attached, she informed me the bill was going nowhere. She said the people in the Governor's Office had told her they were not going to work with her legislation. She felt her bill was likely dead even with passage from the committee. Therefore, she told me that she and, presumably, her cosponsors were rallying behind Representative Flowers' bill. Moreover, she wanted disability rights advocates to stand behind that bill as well. Her reasoning was simple inasmuch as she thought that if her idea for a task force to oversee the pilot project was a nonstarter, it was best to ensure the pilot project never had a chance to take root.

For more, see http://imnotsaying-imjustsaying-cowboy1369.blogspot.com/2010/03/kill-bill-vol-iii.html.

Illinois Introduces Managed Care Pilot to Save $$$

Could it be happening in your state?

See http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-medicaidillinois,0,7621952.story.

CHICAGO - The state of Illinois is planning a pilot project to enroll Medicaid recipients in six counties in managed care, an effort being criticized by advocates for the developmentally disabled.

Illinois' Medicaid agency announced Monday it's seeking proposals from managed care organizations to run the program. It would affect 40,000 adults with disabilities and older adults in DuPage, Kane, Kankakee, Lake, Will and suburban Cook counties.

The state expects the program to save taxpayers nearly $200 million in its first five years.

Advocates for the developmentally disabled are concerned the effort to save money may lead to rationing of health care. Tony Paulauski is executive director of the Arc of Illinois, a group advocating for the developmentally disabled. He says managed care organizations have little experience with developmental disabilities.