[Headline] ADAPT to Confront Health Care Lobby in New Orleans
[Subheading] "Our Homes Not Nursing Homes"
New Orleans, LA---What do you do if you're the "little guy", a disabled or older American, getting trampled by corporate greed and possible fiscal mismanagement? If your name is ADAPT, you fight back! ADAPT, the national grassroots, disability rights group, will be in New Orleans, October 5-10, to confront the American Health Care Association (AHCA), the nursing home lobby, on its continued opposition to "Community First" for Americans with disabilities, young and old.
"Community First" is the rallying cry of 50 million Americans, old and young, who don't want to be forced into nursing homes and other institutions when they could receive the same long term care services and supports in their own homes, in their own communities.
Currently, the nursing home industry has a monopoly on long term care services. Federal Medicaid policy mandates that states provide long term care services in nursing homes and state institutions, but doesn't mandate that states also provide community based long term care services. As a result of this "institutional bias", older and disabled Americans are forced into institutional settings, and are thus deprived of the choice to remain in their own homes, receiving needed services there, services which are usually much less expensive in the community.
According to information from the HHS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), between 1989 and 2001 payments to nursing homes increased by 625%, or $35.9 billion dollars, while the number of people in nursing homes increased only incrementally. During the same period CMS reports that community based services, which operate at roughly a quarter of the nursing home budget, have gone up by only $18.9 billion dollars while serving approximately 500,000 more people.
AHCA is lobbying strenuously for Congress to once again vote for a payment increase to the nation's nursing homes before the end of the year. They hope to convince Congress with a massive marketing campaign carrying the message that more dollars mean improved quality. Yet, a recently released report by the Government Accounting Office (GAO-02-431R) states that there is no correlation between nursing home funding and improved quality of care. This has advocates wondering just what has happened to all the public dollars that have gone to nursing homes for the past 13 years, since there have been no significant improvements in care, and relatively small increases in the number of people served.
"Once again, AHCA is asking Congress to throw money at a problem that begs a far different solution. Did the nursing home industry make a bunch of bad investments with our tax dollars?" asks Stephanie Thomas, a National Organizer for ADAPT. "Did owners pocket too much as profit? Are they now asking Congress for a corporate bailout? We'd sure like to know why Congress would even think about rewarding possible nursing home industry mismanagement by throwing good money after bad. This is corporate welfare at work."
While in New Orleans, in addition to holding AHCA accountable for its opposition to "Community First", ADAPT will be promoting MiCASSA, bi-partisan legislation now in Congress (S.1298 and HR 3612), which reforms federal Medicaid policy to allow all Americans in need of long term care services to choose to receive those services in their own homes. ADAPT will challenge AHCA to support MiCASSA and give people with disabilities, older Americans and families a real choice in long term care services and supports. ###
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- Created on
- Thursday 18 July 2013
- Posted on
- Sunday 22 November 2020
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