JFActivist

United States Supreme Court will decide important cases on the rights of persons with disabilities

By David Heymsfeld, AAPD Policy Advisor

In the next few months the United States Supreme Court is expected to decide two important cases on the rights of persons with disabilities.

The first case, Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, is a challenge to the decision of the State of California to lower the rates paid to doctors and hospitals for Medicaid services.  The suit was brought by persons receiving Medicaid and doctors and hospitals, who assert that the lowering of rates will cause doctors and hospitals to drop out of the program, making it harder for enrollees to get services.

The question before the Supreme Court is whether Medicaid enrollees and doctors and hospitals can also go to a court and ask the court to prevent this type of reduction in rates. If the Supreme Court decides that the courts can consider these cases, Medicaid enrollees will have an important new tool in advocacy to ensure that State Medicaid programs provide adequate services.

In the second case, Hosanna-Taylor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v EEOC, the Court will decide whether ministers and other teachers in religious schools are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The case involves a teacher in a church-affiliated school who was fired because she threatened to bring an ADA case to protect her rights to continue in her job despite a history of sleep disorders. The church claims that in her teaching role she was also serving as a minister of the church, and that the courts have ruled that the ADA does not apply to ministers.

In this case, the Supreme Court may develop broad principles on whether employees of a church with religious duties are exempt from the ADA. If so, the court may also decide which employees are exempt; only those who teach classes in religion, or those who teach subjects such as history and literature, but are expected to be guided by religious principles in their teaching. Hundreds of thousands of employees could be affected.

Health Care Reform: Insurance Available for People with Preexisting Conditions

via AAPD (8.9.11):

Health Care Reform: Insurance Available for People with Preexisting Conditions

By David Heymsfeld, Policy Advisor, AAPD

On August 4th, AAPD participated in a meeting convened by the Department of Health and Human Services to increase awareness of a new program established by the health care reform act (the Affordable Care Act) to make insurance available at reasonable prices to persons who are unable to get insurance to cover preexisting conditions.

Under ACA ,after 2014 health insurance must cover pre-existing conditions. Before 2014, the law requires each State to establish a Preexisting Condition Insurance Program, or to participate in the federal program. The insurance is now available in all States at premiums of about $200 a month for persons under 35, and $400 a month for persons over 50.

The insurance will not be of interest to everyone. Persons on Medicaid and persons who are satisfied with their existing insurance will probably not want to buy PCIP policies. To qualify for PCIP, a person must show that they have been without insurance for 6 months, and that they have a preexisting condition.

Further information on the program and on policies available in particular states may be found at https://www.pcip.gov/

Tuesday, July 26th --- Call-In Day to Save the CLASS Act

via Leading Age (7.22.11):

 

The Community Living Assistance and Supportive Services (CLASS) Act, which many of you worked so hard to help create, is under threat of repeal and we need your help to save it.

On Tuesday, we'll be hosting a Call-In Day to Save CLASS.

We hope you'll participate by sending by calling 888-785-9795 on Tuesday, July 26, and telling your members of Congress 3 main reasons repealing the program would be a mistake:

1.    CLASS Helps Americans - The CLASS program provides families with an affordable way to plan for future supports and services. CLASS will allow more Americans the ability to remain in their homes while getting the care they need.

2.    CLASS Saves Money - The Congressional Budget Office said CLASS will reduce the budget deficit by $83 billion over 10 years. The program also saves federal dollars spent on Medicaid by reducing the number of people relying on the program for long-term services and supports.

3.    Americans Support CLASS - A Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard poll found that 76% of Americans support the CLASS Act program.

Twitter Campaign for CLASS

If you and your organizations are Twitter users, you can tweet the following messages:
@kaiserfamfound poll found that 76% of Americans favor #CLASSAct http://bit.ly/qw6Q1G CC: @whitehouse

Feel free to author your own tweet, but we ask that you include the #CLASSact hashtag.

The coalition supporting CLASS is strong, but your voice makes it stronger.

A Message from Immediate Past AAPD Chair, Tony Coelho

I wanted to alert you to an important upcoming opportunity to make your voice heard on health care policy.

Among the health reform law’s many important provisions was one that creates a new, independent program for comparative effectiveness research. For the first time, this program gives patients a voice, and a vote, to make sure the research gets done in a way that meets the needs of all patients.

Now we need to make our voices heard. I know first hand how easy it is for the health system to tell us as patients and people with disabilities what is “best” for each one of us. I also know how hard it is to change this system so that we can tell it what is best for each one of us.

That’s why I’m asking for your help. If we can make sure this new research institute gets it right, it could give us a lot of valuable information to guide our health care decisions. But if it isn’t done right, it will just feed a system that tells us what is best for us based on an “average” result.

Each one of us is different, with different medical needs, life circumstances, and health care preferences. The opportunity we have right now is getting the research agenda to reflect these differences rather than obscuring them. 

The new institute created to do this research – the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), is holding a Board meeting on July 18-19 in Washington D.C. The Institute is run by a board of governors representing different parts of the health care system, including government, doctors, patients, medical product manufacturers, and insurance companies. As the institute gets up and running, it is vital to make sure the Board understands how important it is to work through open and transparent procedures that give full opportunity for meaningful input and involvement from our community and to define research in ways that are centered on the needs of patients and people with disabilities. You can find out more about this important issue in a one-page background document here.

Since becoming chairman of the Partnership to Improve Patient Care, I have been fighting to ensure patients have a voice in the national research agenda.  Please join me at PCORI’s meeting next week and help me make our voices heard. The meeting is at the Westin Georgetown Hotel, located at 2350 M Street, N.W., Washington D.C., on:

• Monday, July 18, 1:00pm ET to 5:30pm ET
• Tuesday, July 19, 8:00am ET to 11:45am ET

All sessions are open to the public, and those who would like to speak can sign up to speak on-site on the day of the event or email info@pcori.org.

For more information on PCORI’s meeting and what you can do to help keep CER patient centered, call Sarah van Geertruyden at 202-494-5924, or email at saravg@thornrun.com

 

Sincerely,

Tony Coelho

Senate HELP Committee Seeks to Improve Employment for PWD

via The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (6.8.11):
 

HELP Committee to Examine Strategies for Improving Employment for Americans with Disabilities

WASHINGTON — On Thursday at 10:00 a.m., Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, will convene a hearing to examine how to expand and improve job opportunities for people with disabilities. As the 21st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act nears, Harkin seeks to assess the impact of current programs, and discuss ways to achieve the goal he set earlier this year of raising the number of Americans with disabilities in the labor force to 6 million by 2015.

This hearing will be webcast live with real-time captioning at: http://help.senate.gov

Testimony and archived videos will be posted at: http://help.senate.gov/hearings/

 

HEARING:  Lessons from the Field: Learning From What Works for Employment for Persons with Disabilities

WITNESSES:           
Panel I:
The Honorable Kathy Martinez, Assistant Secretary of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, DC
Panel II:
Governor Tom Ridge, Chairman, National Organization on Disability, Washington, DC
Deborah Dagit, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Merck, One Merck Drive, Whitehouse Station, NJ
Amelia Wallrich, Law Student, Northwestern University, Frankfort, IL

DATE:           Thursday, July 14^th, 2011

TIME:            10:00 A.M.

LOCATION: 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building

 

 

 

 

DOJ and Van Buren County, Arkansas Commit to Ensure Civic Access for PWD

via the Department of Justice (6.28.11):

Justice Department Signs Agreement with Van Buren County, Arkansas, to Ensure Civic Access for People with Disabilities

The Justice Department today announced an agreement with Van Buren County, Ark., to improve access to all aspects of civic life for persons with disabilities. The agreement was reached under Project Civic Access (PCA), the department’s wide-ranging initiative to ensure that cities, towns and counties throughout the country comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

 “Individuals with disabilities must have access to public facilities, programs, services and activities in order to participate equally in civic life,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.   “I commend Van Buren County officials for making this commitment to its residents with disabilities by agreeing to come into voluntary compliance with the ADA"...

>>>To Read the Full Press Release

 

How can Project Civic Access help additional cities comply with the ADA? Please share your thoughts below.

 

Lawmakers Suggest Bipartisan Medicaid Reform - Community Choice

From the Hill (6.30.11):

Modernize Medicaid to better support people with disabilities
By Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.)

This month marks the 12th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Olmstead V. L.C., ruling that the needless institutionalization of people with disabilities is illegal discrimination.  Despite that decision, misguided Medicaid rules continue to force millions of people with disabilities to remain in nursing homes, against their wishes and at a much greater cost to taxpayers than many home and community-based alternatives. 

Today, as we seek ways to reduce budget deficits, we must seize on the opportunity to make our Medicaid dollars go farther while finally giving millions of individuals with disabilities one of the most fundamental of rights: the choice to live independently.

The Olmstead decision is sometimes called the Brown v. Board of Education for people with disabilities. It questioned the widespread practice of forcing people with disabilities to live in segregated settings in order to receive services, and it opened the door for people with disabilities to live full lives and participate in their communities.

Adhering to the ADA’s “integration mandate” not only allows people to live the same kinds of lives that the rest of us do, but actually saves money...

>>> For the Full Article

Take Action:

Call your Senators and Representatives and tell them to support the Community Choice, Medicaid reform that saves money and supports freedom and choice for people with disabilities.

Appeals Court Upholds Affordable Care Act

via the LA Times (6.29.11):

In major test, appeals court upholds Democratic healthcare law

The healthcare law President Obama signed last year survived its first test before a federal appellate court Wednesday, as the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati concluded that the law’s insurance requirement is constitutional.

“We find that the minimum coverage provision is a valid exercise of legislative power by Congress under the Commerce Clause,” the judges said in rejecting a legal challenge to the law by the conservative Thomas More Law Center.

The Thomas More lawsuit has not attracted as much attention as two other legal challenges being pushed by Republican state officials in Virginia and other states. Those suits are being reviewed by federal appellate courts in Atlanta and Virginia.

And few legal experts expect that the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will be settled until it is reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, likely next year.

But the ruling Wednesday nonetheless marked a legal victory for the Obama administration and its Democratic allies, who have argued that Congress could require Americans to get health insurance starting in 2014...

>>>For the Full Article

Senate Introduces Independent Living Administration!

via NCIL (6.24.11): 

Senate Introduces Independent Living Administration!

The National Council on Independent Living (NCIL) is very proud and excited to announce that a bill has been filed with the Senate HELP Committee which creates the establishment of a new Independent Living Administration (ILA), and strengthens America’s Independent Living (IL) Program. The ILA would elevate the IL Program at the federal level, and would create an organization independent of the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) within the Department of Education.

The creation of this new administration marks a truly historic moment in the Independent Living Movement, and IL advocates across the country have much to celebrate this week.

The ILA is created through the reauthorization of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which is contained in the larger Workforce Investment Act (WIA). NCIL has been pushing for the reauthorization of WIA and the Rehabilitation Act for nearly a decade, and the introduction of a bill to reauthorize both pieces of legislation presents a unique opportunity to improve the IL Program and substantially increase consumer-control at the federal level.

>>>For the Full Press Release

Medicare, CMS, Hospitals and Unnecessary Institutionalization

via SteveGoldADA.blogspot.com (6.24.11):

Medicare, CMS, Hospitals, and Unnecessarily Institutionalization. Information Bulletin # 334 (6/2011).

There’s been a number of news articles recently stating that CMS will track hospital spending for Medicare recipients and will reward hospitals that keep costs down and penalize hospitals for costs incurred within 90 days after the person leaves the hospital.

It’s a “Medicare spending per beneficiary” device to measure hospital performance. For example, we have national data for infections occurring after surgery and/or as a result of just being in a hospital. Hospitals with much higher rates will be penalized. Similarly, there’s national data for heart attack mortality rates against which hospitals can be compared, rated, and then rewarded or penalized.

Obviously, besides improving medical care, rewards/penalties are an important strategy to control health costs, something everyone agrees is necessary.

We have a simple suggestion for CMS.

How about CMS including in its “Medicare spending per beneficiary” the measure of placement in nursing homes directly from acute care hospitals? This could actually be easily implemented because CMS could actually enforce its own federal regulations which require hospitals to do real and meaningful “discharge planning”?...

CMS - you have a financial interest, the regulatory authority, as well as an interest in the ADA’s mandate that services be provided “in the most integrated setting appropriate,” to address hospital dumping.

Include in the “Medicare spending per beneficiary” plan a measure of post-hospital placements. Reward hospitals that place people in the community with services and penalize hospitals with the worst dumping scores.

 

>>>To Read the Full Post

 

What other steps can be taken to address hospital dumping? Please share your thoughts in comments below.