[Headline] Disabled Group Protests Disrupt AHCA Meetings

by Allen Hogg

A spokeswoman for the American Health Care Association (AHCA) charged that an organization for people with disabilities demonstrating at its meetings seems to have as its goal "creating confusion and getting publicity.

An organizer of American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today (ADAPT) said she is half right.

ADAPT co-founder Mike Auberger acknowledged that publicizing a cause is a primary reason why members of his group have been protesting at AHCA meetings around the country.

These protests, which have been taking place throughout 1991, reached a peak at AHCA's annual meeting in Orlando, FL, in early October. Seventy-six of the more than 300 ADAPT members who went to the Orange County Convention Center were jailed for three days after blocking facility entrances, chaining themselves together by the neck, carrying signs and shouting slogans.

Demonstrations such as this, said Auberger, result in "a lot of media attention and a lot of people all of a sudden understanding the issue."

The issue, as Auberger presents it, is that too much federal money is being spent on long-term care at nursing homes, and not enough for health care provided at home.

"We don't want to keep funding nursing homes," he said. "We want to redirect 25 percent of the nursing home Medicaid budget into personal assistant programs."

ADAPT, which was founded in 1983, had been called Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation while lobbying for the Americans with Disabilities Act. It adopted its new title after that law was passed.

"We moved to this issue because it's probably the single largest issue right now for people with disabilities," Auberger said.

He expressed his belief, however, that the redirection of resources ADAPT is advocating would give all taxpayers more bang for their bucks.

"Care can pretty typically be pro-vided in the home with a higher level of quality and more economically," he said. "I don't know of anybody that wants to go to a nursing home. Most people have a sense that this is where you go to die."

AHCA vice president of public relations Linda Keegan, whose group represents 10,000 non-profit and for-profit nursing homes, of course disagrees.

According to Keegan, taking money from nursing homes is hardly a way to deal with "a dramatically expanding population in need of long-term care."

"To assume that everybody in a nursing home could be better cared for at home is just unrealistic," she said. "We make choices available."

Keegan said it's particularly unfortunate that ADAPT protests disrupt AHCA meetings at which the group's members are trying to learn how to offer better care.

"Any deterrent to people trying to get an education is a shame," she commented.

In order to quell the protests, AHCA has had meetings with ADAPT representatives several times over the past year at which AHCA has attempted to reach a compromise with the protestors. But to Keegan, ADAPT leaders have seemed uninterested in putting together a position that might lead to real public policy change.

"I'm not sure that was ever their objective," she said.

Auberger countered that ADAPT does want public policy change, and would be glad to work with AHCA -- if that group agreed that less federal funding should be given to nursing homes.

"If they were to support the issue that would be great," he said.

In the meantime, he sees little hope of ADAPT members having the clout in Washington that professional lobbyists do.

"Grassroots disability people can't afford to pay for lobbying," he commented.

Thus the protests at AHCA meetings will continue in the hopes of getting media attention and swaying public support. Auberger said plans to demonstrate at the group's October 1992 meeting in San Francisco are already underway.

"When we get to the final end, we'll be victorious," he vowed.

تاريخ الصورة

الجمعه 12 جولاي 2013

تاريخ إضافة الصورة في المعرض

الجمعه 9 نوفمبر 2018

الألبومات

• Orlando, fall 1991

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330

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Canon

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Canon EOS 40D

DateTimeOriginal

2013:07:12 15:46:13

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