ADAPT
				ADAPT Action Report
				MiCASSA
				National ADAPT

For nearly an hour they file from the downtown Radisson Hotel, along Harris Street and into the chilly shade of Centennial Park. Man and woman, young and old they come; some walk, some hobble on walking sticks, but the majority roll - in powered wheelchairs, or in simpler models pushed by companions or self-propelled by their occupants.

Some 500 disabled activists from throughout the country and as far away as Great Britain rallied Sunday, kicking off the fall convention for ADAPT (Americans with Disabilities for Attendant Programs Today). Their goal: To end the stranglehold that nursing homes and institutions have on funding for the disabled, and to free up Medicaid and other money so that hundreds of thousands of Americans may live - and work - in homes and offices, just like their able-bodied countrymen.

"In the time it took to get here, 20 people died in nursing homes," booms Bob Kafka from his chair, an interpreter for the deaf signing furiously at his side.

Two days before the general election, the assemblage is restive: Kafka informs his listeners that a delegation is conferring with House Speaker Newt Gingrich, attempting to pressure the congressman into fulfilling a 1994 pledge to introduce legislation allowing the disabled to choose between institutional care, and home or community-based services. "We've got word the Newtster's signed something," says Kafka. "Well, signing's one thing - doing's another!"

A cheer goes up from the crowd, who scheduled their election-week convention in Atlanta to coincide with another convention, and one with an entirely different focus: that of the American Health Care Association, which begins its four-day convocation Wednesday, Nov. 6.

ADAPT and other disabled-rights organizations have long assailed the nursing home industry in general, and AHCA in particular, as more interested in profits than in people.

"The industry is totally resistant to alternative care," says Mark Johnson, an Atlanta-based ADAPT activist. "Some nursing home operators have gotten into other areas - home-health is one of them - but the industry is realizing that its bread and butter, warehousing people in nursing homes, is breaking down."

As budget cutters sharpen their pencils in Washington and throughout the nation, federal programs are being dismantled, and money is shifting back to states. The problem, says Johnson, is that those funds are still aimed at institutions, and there is no guarantee of any greater availability of home and community-based services.

ADAPT cites figures showing the average cost for one year of nursing home care tops $30,000 per person; attendant service averages $8,000. Government numbers show that just 14 percent of Medicaid funding goes to home and community-based care. In preparation for this year's AHCA convention and anticipated acts of civil disobedience, World Congress Center officials enlisted the aid of Johnson and other activists to help train 400 police and security officers in the proper procedures to arrest a disabled person. "AHCA doesn't want to see us," says Johnson with a smile, "but we're going to be there. And they're going to notice us.

ADAPT has drafted a resolution it hopes to present to AHCA's board of directors, for a vote by the entire organization. Among other things, the document seeks AHCA's pledge to adopt policies promoting the "redirection of 25 percent of all current federal and local spending to self-directed, community-based attendant service," as well as directing that 51 percent of all future spending be similarly targeted. AHCA officers have agreed to meet with ADAPT, but neither side is optimistic of finding satisfactory common ground.

"We disagree with their approach," says AHCA spokesman David Kyllo. "We think a comprehensive, long- term care policy needs to be created, including attended care. But we don't think taking from one needy group to give to another is a sound policy."

He disputed ADAPT's charges that as many as 1 million of the 1.7 million American nursing home residents can be adequately cared for elsewhere. Studies show that more than 90 percent of nursing home patients are over 65, says Kyllo, and that as baby boomers age, that percentage is going to rise. "Nursing homes are not what they were 20 years ago," Kyllo notes. "A lot of our members support the assisted-living industry. We are the assisted-living industry."

Johnson's heard it all before.

"They invite us in, talk to us, offer us panels and workshops ... then do nothing," he says. "We just want them to introduce this resolution; we know they're gonna vote it down. We want a vote for the record."

As of Sunday night, the assembled activists have something else for the record. ADAPT activists gave little credence to a bill Gingrich co-sponsored three days before adjournment this year, painting it as a cynical election-year sop. But Sunday night, Gingrich pledged to create a legislative committee, including ADAPT members, to work directly with his office by Thanksgiving, and to draft legislation to be presented next January aimed at offering a choice of care to disabled Americans.

Distributing copies of the two-page document, scrawled in the congressmen's own hand and bearing his signature along with that of ADAPT national organizer Michael Auberger, Johnson is cautiously optimistic.

"We've got something," he says. "Now we've got to hold him to it."

At any rate, Gingrich has managed to dodge a planned takeover of his campaign headquarters on election eve, and Johnson and his colleagues are plotting other strategies.

"This doesn't let Dole and the rest of the Republicans off the hook," he says. "And President Clinton - he's done a lot more for us than Dole or Gingrich, but we're talking to him, too. But we want some action, we want a commitment. Or maybe we'll go on over to the Clinton/Gore headquarters."

Sure enough, several hundred activists spent Monday afternoon occupying the headquarters of the Democratic presidential candidate, with 86 of them eventually being carted away by police.

"We didn't get as much [as from Gingrich]," says Johnson. "They did promise to convene a meeting with us within the first quarter of 1997, if Clinton's reelected, and there were no charges against the people who were arrested. Now we're off to AHCA..."

The Memphis Center for Independent Living
1633 Madison Avenue, Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 726-6404 v/tty (901) 726-6521 fax
mcil@mcil.org 

MCIL is a United Way of the Mid-South member Agency

Return to the top of this page

MCIL would like feedback on the accessibility of this website.  Please send your comments and concerns to webmaster@mcil.org

© 2006 Tim Wheat