Excerpt from: Disability Law (click for full article)
Kaiser Health News has a decent piece
today on the controversy over the companionship exemption to the Fair
Labor Standards Act. The Department of Labor is preparing rules that
would narrow that exemption and extend minimum wage and overtime
protections to more home-care aides. The proposed rule has provoked
opposition from home-care agencies, predictably. It has also provoked
opposition from many individuals with disabilities and disability rights
organizations, who believe that (without increases in Medicaid
reimbursements) it will make personal assistance unaffordable for many
people with disabilities and drive them into institutions. It's always
seemed to me that there is room for a compromise here, but folks haven't
gotten there yet.
The disability rights group ADAPT focused on this issue during its trip to DC last week;
indeed, they shut down all the entrances to the Department of Labor
building for a time. So I was a bit displeased that the KHN article,
which is otherwise quite well reported, did not include the voice of a
single person with a disability or representative of a disability rights
organization.
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