MiCASSA is Needed Now
Medicaid Reform is Necessary to Prevent More STOLEN LIVES
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ADAPT
Activist removed by Metro Police |
ADAPT activists spent the day on Capitol Hill contacting lawmakers about the importance of MiCASSA, the Medicaid Community-Based Attendant Services and Support Act (S. 971 and HR 2032). Introduced the first week in May, in both the House and Senate, MiCASSA will end the nationwide institutional bias in Medicaid funding that traps many Americans in expensive institutions.
Services in the community are optional; yet, federal policy requires funding of facilities. This bias in the Medicaid system has resulted in 71% ($53.1 billion) of the funding for long-term care being funneled into facility care. Only 29% ($23.3 billion) remains to provide more desirable home and community-based services and supports.
Beyond the statistics, ADAPT has visualized a small part of the human tragedy in the STOLEN LIVES banner. One-hundred and fifty yards long, the banner is filled with hundreds of stories and photos of real Americans that have had part of their lives stolen because of the defective national Medicaid Policy.
People depicted on the banner tell their first-hand accounts of how institutions and facilities have dominated and controlled their lives. Now that they live in the community, in their own homes, the people shown on the STOLEN LIVES banner consider the institutional part of their lives to be taken away from them.
Just as people with disabilities have historically been locked away and concealed from society, the human testament of the STOLEN LIVES banner has been hidden and ignored by typical citizens. ADAPT is committed to getting the word out of those who have been unnoticed for so long: REAL PEOPLE, REAL VOICES, REAL CHOICES. Bruce Darling of Rochester New York, the STOLEN LIVES banner’s creator, calls the banner “…a living document of those people’s lives.”
To continue to drive home this message, ADAPT is organizing the Free Our People March September 4 – 17. Marching from the Liberty Bell to Capitol Hill, 144 miles from Philadelphia to Washington DC. This bold change for ADAPT will highlight the need for MiCASSA and show the determination and will of Americans with disabilities who will no longer tolerate institutions, hospitals and facilities running their lives.
ADAPT activists will be heading home tomorrow to start coordinating the Free Our People March and building support for MiCASSA. ADAPT has had a magnificent week in Washington DC. “We demonstrated that we can hit them hard on one day,” said Bob Kafka of Texas, “and glad-hand with them the next.”
On Sunday 100 ADAPT activists chained themselves to the White House fence demanding an apology from the Bush Administration for the STOLEN LIVES of Americans with disabilities who have been wrongly institutionalized because of this nation’s bias Medicaid policy.
Monday saw ADAPT shut-down Constitution Avenue in Washington DC and block the front entrance to the US Department of Justice to secure a meeting with the head of Civil Rights. Five hundred activists in a coordinated maneuver closed down two major intersections simultaneously with DC Metro Police intermingled with protestors yet unable to act.
On Tuesday visited the headquarters of the American Nursing Association and secured a presentation to the Board of Directors. The ANA granted the appearance only after ADAPT activists blocked every entrance to the gigantic Gallery Mall building that stretches the whole block between 6th and 7th streets.
Finally, Wednesday, ADAPT members split into state groups and pushed legislators to co-sponsor MiCASSA. Small bands of colorfully dressed activists told lawmakers first-hand of the need for Medicaid reform, and their determination to see this legislation signed by President Bush.
FREE OUR PEOPLE!
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