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- ADAPT (949)
The Oakland Press Tuesday October 24, 1995 [Image] [Image caption] The Associated Press. Protesters demand funding for services [Headline] Disabled people protest GOP center More than 200 people in wheelchairs or using crutches and canes take over the headquarters of the Michigan Republican Party for more than two hours to demand funding for in-home services. [Headline] Protesters demand service for disabled The Associated Press Lansing--More than 200 people in wheelchairs or using crutches and canes took over the headquarters of the Michigan Republican Party for more than two hours Monday to demand funding for in-home services. A party spokeswoman said the group arrived shortly after 3 p.m. EDT and began crowding into the office where about eight to 10 GOP staffers were working. Protesters left the building around 5:30 p.m. EDT. They said protests would continue through most of the week in Lansing. "They just came in and started blocked the exit. They wouldn't explain what they were doing there." said Lori Tomek. At least 100 handicapped people were inside the building during the protest. More milled around near the entrances in a noisy standoff with police. They carried signs that read "Free our people now" and "Up with personal assistance services." Organizers claimed handicapped people had come from 32 states to participate in the building take-over. Bob Kafka, an Austin, Texas, organizer of the group American Disabled for Attendant Services Programs Today, said disabled people want better care and better services now. "People who are disabled are tired of being warehoused in nursing homes," he said. - ADAPT (1751)
- ADAPT (894)
USA TODAY Wednesday, October 5, 1994 Nevada Las Vegas- 44 protesters in wheelchairs were arrested after attempting to enter the Convention Center where nursing home operators were meeting authorities said. The 200 to 300 disabled protesters say Medicaid funds should go to home attendant care. - ADAPT (1315)
- ADAPT (1832)
[image] drawing of Wade Blank mid-stride, carrying two children with the wind flowing behind him [image caption] [handwritten] Wade on the run....... - ADAPT (1428)
ADAPT FREE OUR PEOPLE The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President: The long term care policies of this country have unnecessarily segregated people with disabilities, regardless of their age or disability, from the rest of the community by placing us in nursing homes or other institutions. This segregation has a long history, beginning in the mid 1800's when asylums for those with mental and cognitive disabilities began to spring up all over the country. In general, the 19th century was the period when schools and institutions for persons with physical disabilities, deafness, blindness, mental illness and intellectual disabilities took root in the United States as well as the rest of the world. The 20th century continued the repression, discrimination and segregation of people with disabilities with both forced institutionalization and also forced sterilization. Disabled people have survived through these indignities by relying on our tenacity and resourcefulness and through support from family and friends. In more recent times we have won a community support services network, but it has been underdeveloped and under funded while institutional models continue to be funded at 2-4 times the cost. In fiscal year 1997, $108.8 billion was allocated for long-term care services and rehabilitation, housing and veterans activities by government in the United States. Over 50% of these funds went to keeping hundreds of thousands of persons with disabilities in segregated settings such as nursing homes, sheltered workshops and mental institutions (Braddock, 2000). Medicaid, the largest funding source for long term care, has had an institutional bias since its beginning in1965. In 2001 $75.3 billion was spent on long term care services. 71% of these funds ($53.1 billion) were spent for nursing home or other institutional services. Only $22.3 billion (29%) were spent for all community long term care services. (MEDSTAT) While showing the bias in funding, these statistics do nothing to reveal the true devastation that the long term care policies of this country have inflicted on people with disabilities regardless of their age. Millions of people have had a portion of their lives stolen from them because of these long term care policies. Your administration has begun to address some of the inequities that exist in the long term care system through your Olmstead Executive Order and some of the proposals in the New Freedom Initiatives. These proposals, however, do not address the effects these policies have had years of their lives stolen by being warehoused in nursing homes and other institutions. Nor do they go far enough to prevent present and future generations from similar treatment. Many of these individuals will be in Washington, DC from May 10th through 15th and would appreciate it if you could do the following during this week: 1. Issue a written public statement, signed by you, apologizing to the people who have lost a portion of their lives because of the long term care policies of the United States; and 2. Meet with 50 representatives of those individuals who have been in nursing homes and other institutions to discuss how the New Freedom Initiatives will assure that no person is forced into a nursing home or other institution because of the lack of community options; and 3. Support for MiCASSA legislation soon to be introduced; 4. Direct HHS to issue a policy directive that there is currently no federal barrier preventing states from transferring the money serving a person in a nursing home or other institution to serve that person in a home and community setting. This apology would send a powerful message that the long term care policies of the previous eras are a thing of the past, that the US is pursuing a Community First agenda and that the our government respects the people whose lives have been negatively effected by the long care policies of our country. Would appreciate your response by May 9th. For an Institution Free America: The ADAPT Community 1339 Lamar Sq Dr. Suite 101 Austin, Texas 78704 512/431-4085 - ADAPT (1737)
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[This page continues the article from Image 1701. Full text is available on 1701 for easier reading.] - ADAPT (787)
Photo by Gary Bosworth: This is a close up of an ADAPT protester in a denim jacket with black ADAPT armband. The person is pressed up against the fence and reaching through holding a one foot by 9 inch white cross. There are a couple of other crosses like this sticking in the lawn on the other side of the fence Clipped from a newsletter it has the title "NEWS" and a caption: ADAPT protester plants cross on White House lawn. - ADAPT (1493)
Page A2 • CECIL WHIG, Tuesday, September 9, 2003 LOCAL [image] [image caption] CECIL WHIG/Matt Given. 'Making their way along Route 40 in Elkton, members of the group ADAPT pass through Cecil County on Monday. Their destination is Washington, D.C. [Headline] Group carries message to D.C. By Mike Spector jnspector@cecilwhig.com ELKTON — About 160 people An wheelchairs left motorists on Route 40 in the dust here Monday afternoon. Escorted by state police and slowing down traffic beside them, disabled people "marched" approximately 10.4 miles from Elkton to North East as part of the "Free our People" march sponsored by ADAPT, a national grassroots disability rights group. The group is marching to send a message to Congress demanding the passage of the Medicaid Community-based Attendant Services and Supports Act (MiCASSA). The proposed legislation would guarantee disabled and older Americans a choice in where they receive their long-term care services and supports, according to ADAPT. Current Medicaid regulations force elderly and disabled citizens into nursing homes, ADAPT charges, because such federally mandated programs aren't allowed to be cut. This means optional programs that allow those people to receive services at home are first on budget cut lists, according to ADAPT. The march began in Philadelphia and culminates in Washington, D.C., at a 20,000 person rally on Capitol Hill. A few minutes before 4 p.m., marchers were near Nazarene campground, where they will spend the night before continuing to Havre de Grace. Teams with 50 tents, 12 port-a-potties and a 350-gallon water tank set up and strike camp each night for the marchers, according to ADAPT spokesperson Bob Kafka. The group also carries a generator to charge power wheelchairs overnight. Monday night will be unusual, because the marchers will have an indoor facility at their disposal, Kafka said. Kafka said most assume elderly and disabled people have to get their services in nursing homes, when they could be getting them at home. Kafka said up to 2 million people in those institutions don't have a real choice when it comes to where they live and receive assistance. He believes MiCASSA is the answer. "We're challenging Congress' leadership," Kafka said of the marchers, "saying this piece of legislation has to be the number-one priority of the 108th Congress." The Maryland Department of Transportation's State Highway Administration, Maryland Transportation Authority, Maryland Transit Administration, Maryland State Police and local police agencies assisted the group, establishing right lane closures on Pulaski Highway to protect the participants. A pollee motor-cade, crash-attenuating truck and arrow board vehicle escorted the marchers. Portions of Route 40 will be affected across the state Sept. 8 until Sept. 16, as the protestors continue toward Washington, D.C. Marchers Monday afternoon were enthusiastic. Daniese McMullin. Powell, 57, of Newark, Del., carried an American flag and a message. "For our people, our home is not nursing homes," she said. - ADAPT (1310)
- ADAPT (747)
[Headline] Breaking ' em out [Subheading] Why Atlantis's Mike Auberger hates nursing homes [image] [no image caption] If ADAPT members compare nursing homes to jails, it's because any of them have been in too many of both. Mike Auberger, Co-director of Atlantis, Inc., in Denver, has been in over 20 jails nationwide, arrested in ADAPT actions over the past de-cade. In his job with Atlantis, he goes into Denver area nursing homes to spring people who doctors insist can't live on their own. One of the places he frequents is Denver's Heritage Rehabilitation Center, licensed as a long term care facility, where Auberger says "Craig [Rehabilitation Center] sends its losers." He tells the story of one 18-year-old put in the Center whose mother, says Auberger, lives 45 miles away and doesn't own a car. The Center "won't let her take her son out of there because they haven't trained her on tube feeding and respirator stuff. "She takes the Greyhound down, seven days a week, to see her son. But Greyhound doesn't get her there when she needs to be there. They set up meetings for her at 8:30 in the morning. She can't get there on the Greyhound till 11." The rehab center, he says, "sets it up to fail; they set it up to keep him in there. They say they're not going to train her if she's not there at 8:30." "This guy's probably got about a year to live," says Auberger. "When was at home his mom was pureeing food that she cooked; but here they've decided it's easier for them to tube feed." They can bill for more reimbursement that way, he explains. "All he wants is to go home. He knows he's gonna die. He wants his Mom's chile rellenos." "It's incredible," Auberger says. "The place constantly set it up so that his mom was going to miss the meetings and not be able to take him home." To Auberger, the Center's intentions are crystal clear: "They can keep 'em there and bill Medic-aid; that's the whole point." This client got lucky. He got out. "We went in there — we took our lawyer and our doctor; we didn't say anything to the nursing home." Atlantis's doctor, brought in by Auberger, "says there's no reason this guy can't go home." The man, Auberger and the doctor and lawyer he has brought meet in the home's cafeteria. "And all we do is we ask, `do you want our lawyer to represent you?' He says, 'yeah.' We ask him`do you want this doctor here to be your doctor?' " He wants that, too, says Auberger. "Up comes the administrator," says Auberger, relishing the denouement of the story. "We introduce the doctor and the lawyer, and we say, 'he's leaving in a week. You train his mother when she gets in, and if you've got a problem about when she gets in, talk to our lawyer about it." "In a week," says Auberger, "we got him out. He's had pneumonia a 12 THE DISABILITY RAG JULY/AUGUST, 1992 couple of times and been back in the hospital — but he hasn't been in a nursing home. "That's what it's all about," says Auberger, with satisfaction. "Keep-in' em out." At a typical "home," the administration is on the first floor, the patients on the second and third. "If you're a patient there, you can't go up or down; you're on the floor you're on, period." If you want to go down, "you have to get a nurse to take you," says Auberger. "There's no way of getting out of there period — without a nurse. All the doors have alarms on them. "It's like a jail. There's no difference," he says. "And this is modern day treatment." Auberger points out, with irony, that the doc-tor for the Heritage Re-habilitation Center is also the doctor for a nearby prison. People in facilities like Heritage are what's known in the rehab business as "losers," says Auberger — those who don't advocate for themselves. A typical "loser," says Auberger, may be 40 years old when he becomes disabled. "You hold all the preconceived prejudices about disability; you're a c-4 quad and you're depressed and you just don't really want to do anything but exist. You're not the wheelchair athlete, you're not the I'm-gonna-get-over-my-disability type." Auberger charges that places like Craig hold to the approach of "you get over your disability," which he calls "that whole thing of `whitey.' If you don't play `whitey,' you're a loser — it doesn't matter whether your a para or a quad." He suspects doctors send clients from one Denver-area rehab facility to another, shifting them as the allotted maximum time for each facility to be reimbursed for care is used up. A number of doctors have financial stakes in these facilities, he says. "If you look at nursing home structures, what you find is a group of individuals, as a corporation, building a building, licensing it as a nursing home, then selling it to an-other corporation, which they also own, at an inflated price. Then that group will hire the same group" another corporation on paper, but still the same group of people, he insists "as the management corn-pany to run the nursing home. [boxed text] If you don't play `whitey,' you're a loser. "You collect depreciation for awhile on the new building" — as long as you can, he stresses "then you sell it at an inflated price to the second corporation. The second corporation is able to depreciate it again." Then, he says, the management company charges exorbitant rates to the owners to run the home so much that the original corporation goes bankrupt. But that, he insists, is the whole idea: "then they're out from any responsibility." And the management company, which is all the same people any-way, is still running the facility and making money from insurance and Medicaid. "It's all legal," says Auberger, who says the majority of the money that fuels such scams is corn-ing from Medicaid. Nobody ever writes about this, he says, because "it's all legal." Auberger tells of one person who died in one of this group's facilities. For up to a week after the man died, says Auberger, doctors and nurses were "writing care plans" as if he were alive — ostensibly to continue getting Medicaid money. The case is now in a lawsuit. At the same facility, a quadriplegic man was found outside, frozen to death — "a quadcicle," Auberger recalls it bitterly. "Nobody even bothered to notice he was missing." Tube feeding is a sore point with Auberger. One client he just got out had been fed this way, through a tube into his stomach, for over a de-cade. "He hasn't swallowed anything in 11 years,"says Auberger. "He's lying down -- he only gets up once a week so as the food backs up, the acid from his stomach escapes as well. It's destroying his esophagus." He has constant diarrhea, too, says Auberger. "If you ate 24 hour a day you'd be shitting like a wild turkey, too." The man, who was "non-verbal" said Auberger, communicated with him by blinking once for "yes" and twice for "no." The man couldn't use the call button, either. "A nurse came in once a shift to re-hang another bag of food, set the tube feeding — and she's gone." The irony is inescapable: "You've got a machine feeding him, and they're billing for a nurse to feed him. And that's what she does." Auberger points out that the Colorado Nurse Practice Act "says a nurse has got to do tube feeding — and damn if it isn't a machine doing it a machine anyone can learn to run." James Lund vull, a client of Atlantis before he died in an fire set by arsonists JULY/AUGUST, 1992 THE DISABILITY RAG 13 (See "Hate," May/June Rag), had been on tube feeding too, says Auberger, until Atlantis attendants began to wean him from it. Tube feeding isn't a skilled procedure, says Auberger. "If I can do tube feeding, it sure as hell doesn't take a genius to do it." The man in the facility Auberger was visiting had been eating food pureed by his mother when he lived at home and his mother was alive. It "took him almost two hours to eat" but "that wasn't a big deal," said Auberger. "But obviously the nurses decided there's a better way to do things. You can feed this guy by tube--you just destroy his esophagus and ruin his bowels. One day when Auberger visited "it was so bad we couldn't communicate; he had this stuff coming out of his mouth and nose, backing up. I went to get a nurse at ten after two." No nurse came, however, until 20 til four, says Auberger. "She comes in, looks at him, reaches over on his nightstand, gets some kleenex, wipes his nose and mouth, walks out." To Auberger, the obvious problem was that the man needed his feeding level changed; they were giving him "100 drops an hour" which he says is "way too much." But Auberger says the nurse would rather wipe his nose than bother checking on the level of feeding. Auberger insists the stories like these are typical. "I can take you into every nursing home in Colorado; it's no different. Nobody gives a damn." [boxed text] "If I can do tube feeding, it sure as hell doesn't take a genius to do it." [new section] [Headline] Better late than never An 83-year-old-woman heard about Atlantis on a Denver talk show and called them, wanting a way out of a nursing home her family had placed her in 6 years earlier, after a fall. "She didn't break anything; she didn't even hit her head," says Atlantis's Mike Auberger. "She just fell, and her family decided she'd be better off in one." Initially, says Auberger, the woman's family was "irate" that Atlantis had intervened. "We told them how we were going to move her into her own apartment, provide services and so on. They were real skeptical." But a few months later, the family called wanting to get Atlantis services for another elderly relative. They had been won over. "Into a nursing home at age 77, out again at age 83: You don't normally see a progression like that," says Auberger, satisfied. - ADAPT (742)
[This page continues the article from Image 747. Full text is available on 747 for easier reading. ] - ADAPT (1120)
TESTINOMY HR2020 I WENT INTO A NURSING HOME WHENN I WAS 14 YEARS OLD. I REMAINED THERE FOR 43 YEARS. THEY TIED ME IN BED IN A STRAIGHT JACKET. THEY HIT ME ON MY HEAD WITH A SOAP IN A SOCK, SO IT DIDN'T LEAVE MARKS. I HAVE LIVED IN MY OWN APARTMENT WITH ATTENDANTS HELPING ME FOR OVER 20 YEARS. I WOULD RATHER BE DEAD THAN GO BACK TO A NURSING HOME. PLEASE SUPPORT HR2020 SO EVERY DISABLED PERSON CAN CHOOSE IF THEY WANT TO LIVE IN THEIR OWN HOME. FRANK MCCOLM [SIGNED] FRANK MCCOLM - ADAPT (1775)