ADAPT Visits Majority Leader To Deliver the Message: Don't Target People with Disabilities.

9/18/05

(WASHINGTON DC) ADAPT sent a clear message to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist by visiting him at his posh Washington DC private home and demanding he stop targeting people with disabilities for Medicaid cuts, block grants of Medicaid, arbitrary caps and an institutional bias in services. Additionally activists asked Frist to support legislation to end the institutional bias: MiCASSA (S. 401) and Money Follows the Person (S. 528), legislation to provide HUD vouchers for citizens leaving nursing homes and to sponsor legislation to address long-term care, durable medical equipment and other services for Katrina evacuees with disabilities.

“I want to say to Sen. Frist that it isn’t enough to have a position of leadership,” said Randy Alexander, Tennessee ADAPT Organizer. “You have to show leadership for your fellow Tennesseans and for all America. Don’t keep cutting essential programs and services for poor people with disabilities. I want the target off my back!”

Mr. Alexander was the first of hundreds to reach Sen. Frist’s house and block his front gate. Following him were hundreds of activists who filled the usually quiet residential street from one end of the mansion to the other. A giant sign was displayed at the back of the crowd with holes cut in it like colonial era “stocks.” Activists poked their head and hands through the seven-foot tall sign to find themselves targeted by a rag of wet red paint. 

“The Medicaid money should go to help people live in their own home,” said Barbara Bounds from Tennessee. “I am angry because people are taken away from their families and they die in nursing homes.”

Tennessee ADAPT confronted Frist on August 24th of this year in Memphis where they demanded he cosponsor the Money Follows the Person legislation. Tennessee has disqualified hundreds of thousands of citizens from their Medicaid program to save the state its part of the Medicaid funding shared with the federal government. Although his home state of Tennessee is facing a healthcare crisis, Sen. Frist has ignored the problems at home and has targeted people with disabilities for federal cuts and service restrictions.

“Senator Bill Frist hid in an ivory tower before,” said Randy Alexander about their confrontation in August at the ivory colored Clark Tower, “here he is hiding behind an iron gate. Sometime he will meet with us.”

ADAPT is in Washington until Thursday to make the case for Medicaid reform. The MiCASSA legislation would provide home and community-based services and supports in all fifty states so people would have a real choice in long-term care. Money follows the person is a simple idea that some states have had great success with in helping people avoid expensive and undesirable institutional placement. Rather than wasting money that would go to the facility, that money is used to help the person live in his or her own home. 

The day began for ADAPT with a long march to Senator Frist’s house about five miles away. ADAPT marched, blocking traffic as they went, across the National Mall, past the White House, through Du Pont Circle, and into the Rock Creek Park area to Bill Frist’s house on 29th Street. Randy Alexander said, in front of Frist’s house, that this was only the first day of a four-day action, there is a lot ahead.

“You have served your time,” said Louis Patrick of Memphis about Bill Frist, “go home.”

- Tim Wheat