[Headline] Protesters advocate home care for disabled

WASHINGTON (AP) Disabled activists, including more than 100 in wheelchairs, blocked entrances to the headquarters of the Health and Human Services Department on Wednesday to protest policies they said favor nursing homes over home care.

Some of the protesters discarded their wheelchairs and crutches and tried tog et past a police line securing the building. Some crawled under parked police cars and tried to squeeze past the legs of po-

[Subheading] THE STARS AND STRIPES

lice officers who stood in front of the en-trances. 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 wheel-chair and laid 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 health department's headquarters building, just a couple of blocks from the Capitol.

The approximately 175 protesters, organized by a group called American Dis-abled 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.

"Not only is it cost effective, it's the right to dignity and freedom of choice," said Mike Auberger of Denver, a co-founder of ADAPT.

He said 7.7 million Americans are in jeopardy of having to go to a nursing home a cost Medicaid would pay ---- because they can't afford a home-care attendant. Medicaid has a more restrictive policy in reimbursing for home care than for nursing home stays, he said.

However, he noted, nursing home care costs.in the range of $30,000 to $60,000 a year, while attendant care costs $15,000 to $30,000.

Gail Wilensky, head of the Health Care Financing Administration, which administers Medicaid, said many of the problems the group is angry about are not handled by the Medicaid program. Also, she said, some state Medicaid pro-grams do cover attendant and personal care-type services. States design and operate their own Medicaid programs under broad federal guidelines.

Created on

Friday 12 July 2013

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Thursday 8 November 2018

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