MCIL News Release Archive
				National ADAPT
				M C I L
				Tennessee ADAPT
				Not Dead Yet!
				B F M S

Oct. 26, 1998

Contact: Tim Wheat
(901) 726-6404

Local members of ADAPT will join 600 advocates in Washington DC, Oct. 31 through Nov. 5, to demand that Medicaid stop segregating people with disabilities into institutions.

The fourteen Memphis area members of Tennessee ADAPT will be armed with a complaint letter to John Wodatch of the Department of Justice, alleging that Tennessee continues to illegally segregate people with disabilities in institutions. Tennessee spends 96% of public funding for long-term care on nursing homes, and other institutions.

"The power that can free our people is in Washington," said national organizer Mike Auberger, "ADAPT is here to let the American public know that 2 million individuals incarcerated in nursing homes is unconscionable." The federal government spends over $40 billion tax dollars through Medicaid to nursing homes and other institutions. Nationally, 80 percent of all Medicaid dollars paying for long-term care go to institutions, while a mere 20 percent supports people living in their communities.

The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that states provide services to people with disabilities in the most integrated setting, but Tennessee has not even taken the first steps required by the federal-civil rights law. Recently, ADAPT has won concessions from the Department of Justice and Health Care Financing Administration, to support the ADA's mandate to provide the "most integrated setting" in services. In the coming week in Washington, the group plans to push the envelope still further and convince the uncommitted.

Making the choice available by getting health care bureaucracies to support the " most integrated setting" mandate is what the week long action is all about. The action is part of ADAPT's Campaign for REAL Choice. This Campaign builds on past work, such as a recent action in Memphis where ADAPT occupied the Tennessee Governor Sundquist's office for over 24 hours. ADAPT, which played an instrumental grassroots role in pushing through the Americans with Disabilities Act, is fighting to change a climate that favors nursing homes over people.

More than 500 organizations support MiCASSA, ADAPT's bill in Congress --the Medicaid Community Attendant Services Act -- introduced by U.S. House Speaker Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., in June 1997. The bill garnered 76 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle in the 105th Congress, and a Congressional Hearing on the bill was held in March. ADAPT organizers anticipate its reintroduction early in the next session.

Under Medicaid, nursing homes are a mandated service and attendant care is not. It is a state's option to apply for a Medicaid Waiver. Many states fail to use a waiver because of a cumbersome bureaucratic process and the powerful nursing home lobbies. Oregon has gone the furthest, de-institutionalizing more than half their disabled citizens, young and old, since 1982 when a budget crisis forced bureaucrats to look for ways to save state government from bankruptcy. Officials there found they could serve three people in the community for every one person in a nursing home. Ann Koci, Medicaid Director for Kansas, testified before Congress earlier this year that her state's home and community programs saved Kansas $24.5 million in 1996.

"This is beyond an issue of human dignity, it's about publicly traded corporations making money off disabled folks' bodies," said Stephanie Thomas of Texas ADAPT. "Enough excuses - no more pilot projects. We will no longer tolerate the segregation forcing us into nursing homes and other institutions."

After Oct. 31: (703) 418-6800

54 million Americans have some level of disability, 26 million people have a severe disability. [Current Population Reports. U.S. Department of Commerce - Census Bureau. Aug. 1997 p. 70-61]

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

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