/CAPE COD TIMES
THURSDAY, MAY 2 1991

[Headline] Protesters demand home-care funding

[Subheading] FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON --- Disabled activists, including a small group of Cape Codders and more than 100 people in wheelchairs, blocked entrances to the headquarters of the Health and Human Services Department yesterday to protest policies that they said favor nursing tomes over home care.

It was the third straight day of protests by the group.

When police cars surrounded the group yesterday, some of them jumped out of their wheelchairs and tried to crawl under the police cars," Kent Killam, a program coordinator with Cape Organization for Rights of the Disabled
(CORD), said in a telephone interview from Washington.

Other activists tried to squeeze past the legs of police officers who stood in front of the entrances. There were no arrests.

"To people like myself, this is a life and death matter," said Lee Sanders of Houston, who crawled out of his wheelchair and lay on the ground. "It's the difference between living in a nursing home and living at home."

For most of the afternoon, access to the Hubert Humphrey Building was limited to underground tunnels that connect it with other buildings. Cars also were unable to leave the parking lot under the HHS headquarters building, just a couple of blocks from the Capitol.

The protesters were trying to create an institutional-like setting, with people unable to leave the building or the parking lot, said Lisa Nikula, a CORD program coordinator. She did not attend the protest, but talked on the phone yesterday to members in Washington.

"They tried to create that feeling everywhere they went, so people feel trapped inside a building and can't get out," Ms. Nikula said, comparing the situation to that of disabled people who are unnecessarily institutionalized.

The demonstration ended about 6:30 p.m. and full access to the building was restored.

The approximately 175 protesters, organized by a group called American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, or ADAPT, want the Medicaid program to redirect 25 percent of the $23 billion it currently spends on nursing homes.

They want this amount, about $5.5 billion, to be spent on establishment of community-based attendant service programs that would give disabled people the chance to stay at home rather than enter a nursing home.

Gail Wilensky, head of the Health Care Financing Administration, which administers Medic-aid, said many of the problems the group is angry about are not handled by the Medicaid program.

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Petak 12 Srpanj 2013

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• Baltimore, Spring 1991

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