Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

The Current State of Health Care for People with Disabilities

Excerpt from NCD.gov: (click for entire letter)

Letter of Transmittal

September 30, 2009

The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

On behalf of the National Council on Disability (NCD), I am pleased to submit this report, entitled “The Current State of Health Care for People with Disabilities.” NCD undertook this study in 2007 to focus the nation’s attention on the health care disparities experienced by people with disabilities, and to provide information and recommendations that can help to eliminate health care inequities for people with disabilities.

Some key findings include the following:

    * People with disabilities experience significant health disparities and barriers to health care, as compared with people who do not have disabilities.
    * People with disabilities frequently lack either health insurance or coverage for necessary services, such as specialty care, long-term services, prescription medications, durable medical equipment, and assistive technologies.
    * Most federally funded health disparities research does not recognize and include people with disabilities as a disparity population.
    * The absence of professional training on disability competency issues for health care practitioners is one of the most significant barriers preventing people with disabilities from receiving appropriate and effective health care.
    * The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has had limited impact on how health care is delivered for people with disabilities. Significant architectural and programmatic accessibility barriers still remain, and health care providers continue to lack awareness about steps they are required to take to ensure that patients with disabilities have access to appropriate, culturally competent care.

Ted Sorensen, John F. Kennedy's closest adviser, says Afghanistan isn't threatening to become another Vietnam. It already is.

Patti's Comments:  Just because I do not have enough to worry about, I had to see this! URGH! Your thoughts all?

Excerpt from The Daily Beast: (click for entire article)

America’s unwise, unwarranted, and sadly unwinnable war in Afghanistan—hastily initiated and then abandoned for Iraq by President Barack Obama’s ideologically blinded predecessor and dumped into Obama’s lap in the worst possible way—is beginning increasingly to smell like the 1964-68 war in South Vietnam that swallowed up the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.

It all sounds familiar. A powerless leader (whether Vietnam’s Diem or Afghanistan’s Karzai) with a corrupt family and little support in the countryside, who refuses to undertake the reforms (land, tax, electoral, and administrative) that the U.S. president tries to press upon him, therefore endangering the regime’s stability against the guerrilla extremists (once communists, now Taliban). Repeatedly changing U.S. commanders and initiating open-ended increases in U.S. forces, without a clearly definable goal, does not help. A military strategy of “clear and hold” usually lasts about a day.

Reforming Medical Treatment for People with Serious Mental Illness

Excerpt from Health Reform Watch: (click for entire article)

What group could health reform help most?  The obvious choice (maybe the right one) would be people with no insurance, or lousy insurance.  It is clear that un- or underinsurance is bad for your physical and fiscal health.  How about people in need of skilled nursing care and assistance with activities of daily living?  Some provisions of pending bills would allow these folks to avoid the Hobson’s choice of institutional care or too little care.  But the cohort that might stand to gain the most from reform is the population of people with serious mental illness.

People with serious mental illness have long been known to have excess morbidity and mortality as compared to people without serious mental illness.  Although much of this excess is attributable to “unnatural causes” - e.g., suicide – studies have identified in this population substantially elevated natural causes of illness and early death from conditions such as cardiovascular and respiratory disease.    Some of these conditions are caused or exacerbated by side effects of newer atypical antipsychotics.    Much of this excess morbidity and mortality is preventable, and some causes (e.g., poorly controlled diabetes) could be addressed through sound chronic care management techniques I’ve described in an earlier post.    Inadequate attention to the management of the medical concerns of people with severe mental illness could be a particularly attractive goal of health delivery reform.

Group Challenges State Plan for the Disabled

Excerpt from Courthouse News Service: (click for entire article)

A nonprofit group that serves the disabled want Virginia stopped from building a new institution that will segregate people with intellectual disabilities. In its federal complaint, The Arc says the new building will replace the Southeastern Virginia Training Center, which also isolates its mentally retarded and disabled residents from the community.

The Arc, a nonprofit community-based organization formed to improve services for the mentally handicapped, claims that a state-sponsored study found that every resident of the Center could be served in a community-based program rather than an institution. But that didn't stop Virginia officials from including plans for a new facility in the state budget.

Virginia plans to move 75 residents of the Center to the new building; the rest will be moved to community-based programs for the mentally retarded.

The Arc says Virginia's plan violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. It seeks a declaration that Virginia must provide public and integrated services for the mentally handicapped. And it also wants the budget bill item with the plans for the new facility declared invalid.

Hate Crimes Against Those with Disabilities

Patti's Comments:  I agree with this mom!

Excerpt from Beneath Wings: (click for entire article)

Headlines today are that Obama signed into law an addition to the hate crimes law that makes this law also cover differences in sexual orientation. But to me, the big news is what the press is only barely noting: the new addition also includes those crimes done due to a person's mental or physical disability. YEAH!

Get to know the person behind the disability

Patti's Comments:  Amen to this!

Excerpt from InForum: (click for entire article)

Picture yourself in a wheelchair. Add this fact: It is permanent. There are no miracles left. Forget about the cause; this is the life you have now. There is no choice but to accept your fate and make the best of it. Got the picture? Now, go out into society and see what you run into.

Most people don’t see the person behind the disability.

You are treated not as a person with a disability, but as a disabled person. People look at the things you can’t do rather than the things you can do.

In stores, clerks talk to your companions, but not to you. In restaurants, everyone gets a menu but you. People automatically assume that a physical disability also means a mental disability. People don’t talk directly to you.

Most people assume you are more disabled than you are. Their disbelief, stemming from their incorrect assumptions, is painfully obvious. “You have a job?” “You go to school?” “You can wash the dishes?”

Most people avoid you.

Dodd, Murphy Call for Better Affordable Housing for Seniors, People with Disabilities; Murphy Testifies at Banking Hearing in Support of Bill to Provide Housing for People with Disabilities

Excerpt from Real Estate Rama: (click for entire article)

Today, Congressman Chris Murphy (CT-5) testified on how to expand affordable housing options for seniors and Americans living with disabilities at a Senate Banking Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development hearing.  Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Banking Committee, joined Murphy in calling for the modernization of federal housing assistance programs to ensure they can meet the needs of low-income residents of Connecticut and the rest of the nation.

Murphy testified on his bill to modernize the “Section 811″ housing program, the only federal program dedicated to helping low income citizens with disabilities live independently in the community through affordable housing and supportive services.  The “Frank Melville Supportive Housing Investment Act of 2009″ is named in honor of longtime Connecticut resident Frank Melville, an influential figure in affordable housing policy in Connecticut and across the country.   Frank Melville was the original Chair of the Melville Charitable Trust, a leading source of funding for research and supportive housing for over fifteen years.

“We need to provide Connecticut seniors and citizens with disabilities with more affordable housing choices,” said Dodd.  “Last week, Diane Randall from the Partnership for Strong Communities in Hartford testified to my Committee that renting a modest 1-bedroom apartment in Connecticut would cost a person with disabilities living off of Supplemental Security Income over 116 percent of their income.  It is simply unsustainable.  Congressman Murphy has shown real leadership with this bill and I’m glad to work with him on this and other efforts to give Connecticut residents better affordable housing options.”

GAO: Elderly, disabled voters still confront access problems

Patti's Comments:  Really? I could have told them this without spending the money on the report! We waste so much money on reports rather than just doing the right thing!

Excerpt from McKnight's Long Term Care News & Assisted Living: (click for entire article)

The Department of Justice should do more to ensure that elderly and disabled individuals have voting access, a recently released report found.

The Government Accountability Office, at the request of a number of U.S. senators, conducted a nationwide survey on Election Day last year to determine whether states had met the goals for voter access laid out in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. Released Tuesday, the report shows that strides have been made over the last few years, but in some areas of the country, barriers still remain for elderly and disabled individuals. For example, 46% of polling places surveyed in the report had voting systems technically considered “accessible,” but that could still pose problems for people in wheelchairs. Sens. Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) released the report.

200m9-HLA-5235-3 and other news

Excerpt from MI Elder Law Discussion List: (click for entire article)

FYI, this week the Senate Health Policy Committee continues to take testimony on the interesting issues of genetics testing and insurance, and the Senate Economic Development Committee is taking up HB 5235, designed to bring MI law into conformity with federal law regarding Medigap policies.

Senator George and Rep. Corriveau have continued to meet, as have the principle lobbyists from the health plans assoc and the Blues.  However, both the HMO’s and private insurers are rethinking whether they think it is a good idea to split the issues of consumer reform and individual market “reform”.  There are two reasons for that:  with federal health care reform looking as though it actually will happen, all of the same laws will need to be opened up again and the federal change will reduce the numbers of uninsured.  The other reason is that most of the “reforms” constitute retaining current law—e.g., keeping the Attorney General’s oversight—and you don’t need legislation to do that.  There is even talk going around about “Do we need a tax exempt BCBSM once federal health care reform has passed?”  Given that the consumer issues are of concern to, well, consumer groups, they decided it would be a good idea to put together a larger meeting that would include both industry representatives and consumer organizations like ELDRS.  I am not sure when that will happen, but probably within the month if not sooner.

Hollywood Disabilities Forum Draws a Who's Who Crowd of Hollywood's Best Creative Talent

Excerpt from Shoot Online: (click for entire article)

The Hollywood Disabilities Forum, held on October 24 at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, served as a high-visibility reminder that people with disabilities are a significant part of our society – as much as 20 percent of the U.S. population by some estimates – yet people with disabilities remain "virtually invisible" in media portrayals on screen and stage.

"It's crucial for all of us – actors, writers, directors, producers, casting associates – to come together to examine these problems and create solutions," said Robert David Hall, master of ceremonies and national chair of the SAG Performers with Disabilities Committee. "I always think of the little kid that needs to see for him or herself, their own image reflected. To be marginalized, to be cut out of mainstream TV, movies and advertising stinks, and we're trying to change that."

The forum was sponsored by I AM PWD (Inclusion in the Arts and Media of Performers with Disabilities), a civil rights campaign by the Screen Actors Guild, AFTRA, Actors' Equity Association Tri-Union Performers with Disabilties Committee, the Writers with Disabilities Committee of the Writers Guild of America West and Alliance for the Inclusion in the Arts, with assistance from the California Arts Council, the National Arts and Disability Center at UCLA and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. "The mission of the committee is to enhance the status and promote the advancement of actors with disabilities in an industry that, too often, denies access, stereotypes or disregards people with disabilities. This is why the themes of Access, Inclusion and Accuracy are so important and emphasized throughout the I AM PWD campaign," said Rebecca Yee, national director/senior counsel of SAG Affirmative Action & Diversity.