Nashville Banner
FROM PAGE ONE
Tuesday, May 3, 1994
A-2
[Headline] Midstate woman with MD marches for health reform
By Judy Holland
Banner/States News Writer

WASHINGTON — As she guides her electric wheelchair in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, it's clear Wynelle Carson is a woman set on independence.

Her wish to live free of a nursing home prompted this 34-year-old Mount Pleasant woman with muscular dystrophy to join more than 2,000 people with disabilities in a march on the U.S. Capitol.

Carson was part of a contingent from Middle Tennessee who joined other activists from across the country Monday in lobbying lawmakers and President Clinton for health care reform that includes payment for attendants who can help them live at home.

It wasn't the first time members from ADAPT — Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today — picketed to draw attention to their plight. Last fall in Nashville, the group disrupted operations at the Opryland Hotel and the state Capitol while the American Health Care Association—which represents most of the nation's nursing homes — was in town for its annual convention.

The protest which threatened to disrupt the Country Music Awards, erupted into a melee with overturned wheelchairs that ended in the arrests of 97 activists. Monday's rally, which included speeches and songs, was one of the mellower protests for the group, which has occupied offices, blockaded buildings and forced mass ar rests to draw the spotlight to their cause.

Disabled rights activists, who want 25 percent of all Medicaid dollars diverted from nursing homes to home health care, say civil disobedience is the only way they can combat the powerful nursing home lobby.

"People like me are being forced into nursing homes if we can't pay someone out of our pocket," Maury County's Carson said. "It's horrible."

Carson said her father, a retired machine operator, shells out $900 a month for an attendant who helps her dress, bathe and prepare meals in her own apartment.

Her mother also comes over often to lend a hand.

"I feel really guilty all the time because I'm taking away from them," said Carson, who works part-time at the Technology Access Center in Nashville. "I worry if something happens to them and they've spent all their money on me, what are they going to do?"

Carson joined others on scooters and in wheelchairs who waived signs such as "I don't want a handout, just a hand," or "Would you like to live in a nursing home? Not."

While Canon prepared for the "Bridge to Freedom" march from Arlington Memorial Cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial, Diane Coleman of Cumberland Furnace in Dickson County joined disabled rights activists in a visit with the president.

Clinton, whose health care plan would phase in $65 billion to $70 billion for community and home-based care, urged the activists to lobby for his proposal in Congress.

"A lot of disabled people spend their entire lives with their parents the and then go into a nursing home when the parents die," said Coleman, Tennessee organizer for ADAPT.

"In Tennessee, it's very difficult to get any in-home services if you are disabled. In that regard, it's one of the worst states in the country."

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Tuesday 16 July 2013

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Wednesday 7 August 2019

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• Washington DC, Spring 1994 - A Bridge to Freedom

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